Pesticides found in water samples
HYDERABAD: As Andhra Pradesh health department looks into the source of heavy metals like lead and nickel in the blood samples of people in Eluru town who suffered from a mysterious disease in the past three days, latest tests revealed the presence of high residues of pesticides in drinking water samples.
The disease left one dead and over 500 people with symptoms ranging from giddiness and convulsions to epilepsy.
Reports of water samples tested by a Vijayawada-based private laboratory at the instance of Eluru Municipal Corporation, reviewed by HT indicated that the drinking water supplied to areas like Gandhi Colony, Ramachandra Rao Peta, Pension Line Area and JP Colony contained high quantities of various pesticide residues, thousands of times more than the permissible limits.
The samples were sent to the laboratory for testing on Sunday and the reports were submitted to the state health department on Tuesday night. “Test results of another 15 samples have come on Wednesday,” a senior official in the food safety division of Eluru municipal corporation said on condition of anonymity.
According to the official, parts of Eluru town get water supply from Godavari river and Krishna river through canals. Water samples from these canals were also tested and they were found to have residues of Alachlor and Methoxychlor to the extent of 10.88 mg/litre to as high as 17.64 mg/litre. “The maximum permissible limit of these pesticide residues in all these water samples is <0.001 mg/litre,” the official quoted above said.
More water samples of various other localities were also sent to another private laboratory and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR-IICT) in Hyderabad for corroboration.
“It is a strange phenomenon. But we suspect that the high presence of heavy metals in the blood samples of patients could be due to a process called biomagnification – accumulation in blood over a period of time and it will lead to symptoms of neurotoxicity,” the official said.
Eluru government hospital superintendent AVR Mohan, who explained the latest developments to chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy in a video conference, said apart from heavy metals like lead, presence of pesticides also was also responsible for the mysterious disease.