ISLAMABAD, March 8: The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) has said with assistance from Unicef it has developed low-cost water treatment units, comprising a set of filters, which eliminate arsenic as well as other microbiological contamination from drinking water.

A joint statement issued here on Monday said the two organizations planned to provide these units at a nominal cost to areas where arsenic concentration in drinking water was higher than acceptable standards.

"Following detection of arsenic contamination in the country, the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources and Unicef initiated a collaborated effort in the year 2000 through field testing of ground water in all the four provinces."

With samples from the NWFP and Balochistan causing not much concern, the purview of testing was narrowed down to Punjab and Sindh. A joint study conducted during the following two years revealed arsenic presence of more than 50ppb in some areas of Punjab, which was the threshold value followed by the Pakistan Standard Quality Control Authority.

In order to undertake further detailed testing, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources and Unicef in October 2002.

Subsequently, 2,400 villages in Punjab were surveyed and over 12,000 samples were analyzed, which revealed that 2.79 per cent of samples tested had arsenic contamination of more than 50ppb.

Activities in Sindh were in progress, the statement said. So far, the focus of collaboration between the two organizations has concentrated on assessing the nature and gravity of the contamination. However, long-term planning, social mobilization and awareness raising amongst the affected communities, generation of resources and advocacy for political commitment by the federal, provincial and district governments as well as motivating other development partners to support the activity formed the basic of future strategy in fighting arsenic in Pakistan.

Arsenic is widely distributed throughout the earth crust as it is the twentieth most common element in nature. It is considered to be extremely toxic though it has no smell or taste even in high concentration.