PESHAWAR: People are getting stomach related as well as other ailments like cancer and teeth diseases due to consumption of contaminated water in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, according to Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

“In hospitals, schools, colleges, offices and houses the quality of drinking water isn’t up to the standard which causes health problems,” Jehangir Shah, principal scientific officer at PCSIR, told Dawn. According to him, lack of awareness among people about water management is becoming a problem.

“We have found bacteria in water in many localities in Peshawar and elsewhere in the province and Fata,” said Mr Shah. He said that water was pumped out by people from main pipelines which was then left open or covered with contaminated stuff that caused health problems to the users.

“In many areas, water is harder due to presence of underground rocks,” he said.

Expert says they have found bacteria in water in many areas in the province and tribal areas

According to Dr Fayyaz Ali, a public health expert, 40 per cent of the deaths in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata are caused annually by water-borne diseases. He said that contaminated water was also responsible for 40 per cent deaths among children of less than five years of age. “People don’t care about the cleanliness of water,” he said.

Dr Ali said that water distribution system was faulty due to which sewerage water got mixed with drinking water in the rusted pipelines. “People don’t clean storage tanks which are supposed to be cleaned after every three months,” he added. PCSIR’s Jehangir Shah said that crows were also one of the main causes of contaminating storage water tanks as they sat on the uncovered water tanks and threw contaminated flesh in it. Leakages from the faulty joints of the pipelines in distribution system contaminate the commodity before reaching it to the consumers.

“We need an awareness campaign at the community level to scale up people’s knowledge about the advantages of home-based and main government’s owned water tanks,” he said.

Mr Shah said that process of chlorinating water tanks was simple. “Regular chlorination makes water fit for human consumption,” he said.

The situation in some areas, like Khyber Agency, with regard to water is pathetic because the residents develop more health problems especially they get yellowish teeth due to excessive consumption of fluoride in water.

The people of the specific localities there have been suffering from decaying of their teeth in early life due to more consumption of fluoride than the permissible limit of 1.5my per litre which affects all those, who receive water from tubewells and home-based wells.

The people living in some areas of Tank and Dera Ismail Khan are using arsenic water. Arsenic is known carcinogenic agent. It occurs in water due to excessive sodium chloride.

The main source of arsenic, which causes cancer, in drinking water is rocks through which the water is filtered before reaching to the consumers.

Mr Shah said that not only contamination of water but its fast depletion could also cause acute shortage in the next 10 years.

“We have to look for alternative sources of water as because of increasing metallic earth surface chances of recharging water sources are getting reduced,” he said. He added that diminishing water quality and quantity were main problems.

Mr Shah said that government could use water from the Kabul River for human consumption in future. “It is the sole option as other sources are fast depleting. We can treat the water of the river and make it drinkable,” he said.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2015

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