Patancheru is Unfit for Living

The Cyberabad Times
Friday,January 26, 2007

Source: Green Peace India, The Hindu, EPA United States

India's pharmaceutical industry is heavily concentrated in a few small areas, one of the most prominent and notorious being near the town of Pattancheru in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Over the past two decades, a growing chain of industrial estates has turned this 20-mile stretch of countryside into an Ecological

Sacrifice Zone.

A study in Pattancheru shows clinically confirmed Cancer was found to be 11 times higher. Respiratory diseases affected one in every 20 persons. Heart diseases were 16 times higher.

With some real estate firms trying to sell away land allotted for industries, amid highly polluting industries in the Pattancheru Industrial Estate, the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Limited (APICL) has asked investors to be cautious before venturing into any agreement.According to APIIC Zonal office in Pattancheru, the groundwater and ambient air in the industrial estate is highly polluted and one must be aware of the fact that only industries would survive in this locality.

While pointing out that one would need a 'No objection certificate' (NOC) from the APIIC before going to the Pattancheru sub-registrar's office for registering the site on one's name, it is sad that high land value in the twin cities is driving the middle class investor to the outskirts like Pattancheru.

The mere smell of the villages, water is enough to make you gag. Pollutant concentrations in area streams and lakes range from 12 to 100 times as high as those in an unpolluted lake just outside the contaminated zone, according to the 2004 report of a committee appointed by the state's High Court.

A 2004 survey by Greenpeace India compared villages and found high rates of these and other illnesses where water is shared with drug plants. Two major universities have launched studies of health problems in the area. Clinically confirmed cancer was found to be 11 times higher in the study group. Respiratory diseases affected one in every 20 persons. Heart diseases were 16 times higher. Congenital malformations and chromosomal abnormalities were 3.93 times higher. When it comes to systemic diseases it was no better. Diseases of the nervous system were three times higher and circulatory system two times higher. Those of endocrine, nutritional and metabolic systems were 1.84 times higher. Disorders of blood and blood forming organs were 2.9 times higher and those of skin and sub-coetaneous tissues 2.67 times more than in control group.

Thousands of acres of formerly good farmland around Pattancheru lie uncultivated during the dry season because groundwater has become unfit for irrigation. The court committee sampled 48 wells in the area and found 81 percent polluted beyond an international standard for irrigation water. The study was conducted by administering an open-ended exploratory questionnaire to document the health-related information of the people in the study villages of Bonthapally, Chitkul, Digwal, Gaddapotharamu, Kazipally, Kistareddypet, Pasha Mailaram, Pocharam and Sultanpur in Pattancheru, Jinnaram and Kohir Mandals of Medak district.

In accordance with court orders, drug companies are paying to have safe water piped into affected villages for drinking and cooking. But the polluted water is still used for other purposes in the home and on the farm. The court committee visited 40 "pollution potential" companies in the industrial estates. Of those, 30 were producing drugs or drug ingredients, and only five were complying fully with Patancheru's lenient pollution laws.

Despite repeated crackdowns by government authorities, some factories continue to pollute the Pattancheru area's air with sulfurous mercaptan compounds that smell like rotten fish ironically, during the production of stomach antacids.

Pattancheru area, where normally only the total quantity of pollutants is tracked, there's almost no information about specific toxic compounds. That's serious, because some of the drug industry's solvents, byproducts and ingredients can harm people even at low concentrations.