Assam Government’s creation of a joint plan of action for fluoride mitigation in Karbi Anglong and Nagaon is a welcome move. The Public Health Engineering department with the Fluoride Research and Rural Development Foundation, New Delhi, will implement the plan.

Water is the best bearer of fluoride. The permissible limit in India is 1.2 mg per litre concentration of fluoride in drinking water. Anything above 1.5 mg/l is considered hazardous. Till two years back 15 states of our country were regarded as fluoride endemic states. Assam didn’t fall in the category, not because the problem didn’t exist here but due to the inefficiency on the part of the authorities for not being able to identify the serious problem that the State was carrying. It was only two years ago that a senior engineer of the State PHE department due to his singular efforts, ascertained that certain parts of Karbi Anglong and Nagaon contained fluoride in water higher than the standard limits. On analysis it was found that the water in these two districts had fluoride contents up to 15 mg/l and in some pockets it was even as high as 30 mg/l. Such high fluoride content leads to flurosis in teeth and bones. If consumed for years together then there is a likelihood of bony exostis and great damage to the kidney. Several children have already been affected in these two districts.

The measures to be taken by the joint plan of action are — exclusive water quality testing in fluoride affected areas, alternate water supply system to be implemented, necessary health measures to be taken, social mobilisation and awareness to be generated on the issue, selection of an appropriate and feasible technology and base line survey and documentation of the project. As far as selection of technology is concerned, there may be two options — the first being the dilution of fluoride rich water with fluoride less and pure water while the second is the defluoridisation of water through multi sectoral seperation. However, the first of these methods is definitely more easy to carry out as well as cheaper.