Sialkot industrial, urban waste: groundwater pollution causing serious health Issues

Sialkot is known as Pakistan's largest sports and leather goods producing city along-with leather related industries, textile, metallurgical and pharmaceutical industries. It earns annually 1.2 billion dollars annually and contributes to the national exchequer. There are over 264 tanneries, 244 leather garments/products manufacturing and 900 leather sports good manufacturing units are scattered in and around the city.
A total of 52 million litres per day of wastewater along with 1.1 million wastes from tanneries is discharged into Nullah Aik and Pulkhu, sewerage drains, ponds and open agricultural lands from the Sialkot city. According to different estimate, each tannery in the district generates 547-814 m3/day volume of wastewater. The industrial units have no wastewater treatment facilities.
This large volume of industrial and urban waste is considered as the major threat to ground and surface water of the area. Quality of the groundwater - main source of drinking and irrigation is getting deteriorated due to untreated discharge of industrial and urban effluent and chemical substances in agriculture. Untreated industrial process water, irresponsible dumping of the solid and sludge waste has become the deadliest threat for the health and safety of the people living in the areas directly effected by such practices.
The drinking water in the area contains highly volumes of arsenic, sulphates and chromium and by any standard this is not fit for drinking for human beings and animals. Despite being fatal in its essential characteristics it is being used for irrigation to become a part of the food chain for human beings and even for the livestock to eventually play havoc with the life and health of the voiceless souls living here.
Dr Abdul Qadir, a well known environmental scientist, enlightened the participants with his views of a seminar "health hazards generated by industrial solid and fluid waste" arranged by Baidarie Sialkot, here on Thursday. He said that the number of patients admitted in hospitals of Pakistan with waterborne diseases has increased about 200 percent in the last two decades. National Conservation Strategy (NCS) report tells that about 40 percent of deaths are related to water-borne diseases. About 25 to 30 percent of all hospital admissions are connected to water-borne bacterial and parasitic conditions with 60 percent of infant deaths associated with the same infections.
Drinking and bathing in polluted water and the sanitation problems are the most common routes for the spread of diseases with symptoms like abdominal pain, hair loss, numbness in hands, loss of appetite, eye infections, irritation of skin, fever, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, cryptosporidiosis and guinea worm infections.
Dr Abdul Qadir said that a "assessment of groundwater contamination in an industrial city" was conducted by the Environmental Biology, Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. In the preliminary survey of tap water used for drinking in the areas hit by tanneries, most of the samples were found contaminated with coliforms. These coliforms are major contributors in gastro-intestinal problem. The drinking water contamination due to municipal sewage and tanneries effluents cause over 82 percent diseases of bowel diseases like dysentery, cholera, typhoid, and other ailments in Sialkot and its surrounding areas.
Since a substantial faction of the rural population depends on natural water bodies for daily water requirements for themselves, and the livestock, serious health and material losses can be expected in the down stream areas of Sialkot as tannery effluent has residual effects that can transmit into food chain.
The expert cautioned about the extensive use of fertilisers and pesticides and said this is also contributing to increase groundwater pollution level in vicinities of Tehsil Sambrial. Nitrogenous fertilisers are used to increase the fertility and nitrate level in soil. After heavy irrigation nitrates percolate down in ground water. He revealed that high level of nitrates in groundwater has been reported at many places in Roras union council.
The concentration of nitrates in ground water is continuously increasing, which is an alarming threat for local people. Pregnant women are the most concerned to harmful impacts of ground water contamination. Elevated level of nitrates in drinking water can cause abnormalities in blood circulatory system of developing foetus inside mother womb. This situation needs urgent steps to provide clean and safe drinking water to local community, he concluded.
Hina Noureen, President Baidarie demanded immediate action to save people from ruining of their health. She said that the innocent poor are being penalised for those faults, which are not committed by them. One day they learn that they have become incurably sick but they never know that it is the water contaminated by the venomous metallic pollutants which they have been drinking and it is going to swallow their health, domestic economy and social well-being she said.
She made an emphatic plea with the government and other stakeholders that immediate arrangements should be made to provide easy access to purified drinking water to the people. She said that there is an urgent need to control heavy metals contamination of groundwater and if this issue is left unattended, this will pose problems to provide safe drinking water for the human beings.
Speaking on the occasion, Chaudhry Shabbir-ul-Hassan advocate said that there exists dire need for environmental awareness; adequate regulations and proper management of waste sites by the local municipal authorities. There should be rigorous check on industrial water pollution by implementing strictly the pollution control laws. The government should move forward to ensure control on the disposal of untreated effluents around the industries. Professor Arshad Mehmood Mirza, also, shared his knowledge with the participants of the seminar.
Concluding the deliberations during the seminar, Chaudhry Omar Abudullah Ghumman endorsed that in the best public interest, high concentration of heavy metals and other hazardous substances in the groundwater quality in the country in general and Sialkot city in particular should be evaluated. Through this, a better balance should be achieved by minimising the seepage of concentrations and anthropogenic contaminants into the water table and open areas.