The health impact of polluted Buddha nullah waters affecting Abohar city, finds ground report
Neighbours (L-R) Radha Somani, Anju Kalani and Sasi Garg are all fighting different types of cancer. Photos: Rohini Krishnamurthy / CSE_ Ground visits by this reporter to several Punjab villages revealed a high disease burden in them, linked to consumption of water polluted by industrial effluents and municipal waste. But the health impact is not restricted to tiny hamlets.
An entire street in Abohar city of Fazilka district is colloquially known as “cancer street”, as a large number of cancer cases are reported among the residents.
Villages like Gaunspur, Churi Wala, Dharangwala and Burj Mohar have a huge burden of diseases like cancer deaths, severe skin and dental issues and intellectual disabilities in children.
Polluted water from the Buddha nullah merges with the Sutlej, which in turn feeds the Sirhind canal, which is the main source of water for these villages and Abohar city. The Buddha nullah is a 40 km long stream that passes through Ludhiana city before merging with the river in the Ludhiana district.
Manmohan Goyal, a kirana (local grocery) store owner in Abohar city in Fazilka district, has seen two family members succumb to cancer. The street he lives on, Circular Road, is also called “cancer street”. At least 20 people suffer from cancer on street number 2 of the road, a lengthy lane with 65 households, he said.
Goyal’s mother had tongue cancer. She was 70 years old when the disease claimed her life. His oldest brother died due to pancreatic cancer. “He was 57 when he was diagnosed and died a year later. My brother was neither alcoholic nor a smoker,” Goyal told Down To Earth (DTE).
Another brother survived throat cancer. He was diagnosed six years ago and underwent treatment in Delhi for four months. But his woes have not ended — he was diagnosed with kidney problems in December 2022 and is currently undergoing dialysis.
This is not the first time Goyal’s brother has had such problems. He suffered from kidney failure in 1984 and had a kidney transplant in 1995.
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Sewers carrying industrial, agricultural, domestic and municipal waste have been entering the nullah for a long time. In 2010, the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests declared the nullah a critically polluted area.
Dyeing and electroplating industries use heavy metals and their effluents get dumped into the Buddha Nulla illegally, Anand Kumar, manager of the Tajpur Sewage Treatment Plant, had earlier told DTE. The Tajpur STP in Ludhiana handles 225 million litres sewage every day.
Goyal’s locality gets canal water two or three times a week, but only for three hours. The residents rely on the saline groundwater for the remaining days.
“The canal water is black in colour when we switch on the motor. It stinks. We need to let the water flow for 30 minutes to get relatively clean water,” Goyal told DTE.
People in Manmohan’s locality are economically well-off, compared with the villagers. But their situation is not very different from residents of Burj Mohar, Dharangwala and Churi Wala villages.
Houses that DTE visited have reverse osmosis water filtration systems to treat the groundwater and canal water, depending on what is available.
The groundwater is unfit for drinking as the total dissolved solid (TDS) levels are around 3,000 milligrams per litre (mg/L), which is higher than the permissible limit of 500 mg/L, Goyal noted.
TDS represents dissolved organic matter and inorganic salts, including sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, chloride, bicarbonates and sulphates. The residents change the filter of the RO plant once every month if they use groundwater or twice a month when canal water is used.
Sixty-three-old Radha Somani, who lives across the street from Goyal, was recently diagnosed with Urothelial carcinoma (cancer which begins in cells that line the urethra, bladder, ureters, renal pelvis, and some other organs).
She underwent treatment at Advanced Cancer Institute in Bathinda, which is roughly 75 kilometres away from Abohar.
A few houses from Somani lives Anju Kalani, aged 58. She was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, a late-stage liver disease where the organ is permanently damaged, around two years ago. Kalani is currently undergoing treatment at The Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, Delhi.
“There are no good doctors in Abohar,” Kalani noted.
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It has been a year since Sasi Garg (64) was told by her doctor that she had liver cancer. Like Somani, Garg is being treated in Bathinda and is undergoing chemotherapy.
The life of another resident, Nitesh Mittal, took a tragic turn after he lost both his parents to cancer. His father died six years ago due to liver cancer and his mother passed in 2013 due to throat cancer. What’s more, Mittal, aged 30, has an intellectual disability.
“I have seen 14–15-year-olds being diagnosed with liver and kidney problems. I fail to understand how we are seeing such cases for people who eat at home and do not smoke or consume alcohol,” Goyal told DTE.
This story is part of a series on the health problems faced by people of Punjab due to pollution.
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