Keywords
Severity-incidence-index
Health-stcok index
How to Cite
Abstract
The study endeavour sought to undertake an economic evaluation of groundwater contamination by arsenic in the districts of Jorhat and Nalbari, situated in the state of Assam. The research encompassed a total of twelve remote villages spanning across two districts of Assam viz. Jorhat and Nalbari. A comprehensive sampling strategy was employed to select a total of 175 households from the Titabor block in the esteemed Jorhat district, and an additional 180 households from the Paschim Nalbari block in the illustrious Nalbari district. These particular blocks were chosen due to their notable prevalence of elevated arsenic concentrations, which in turn resulted in a significant impact on the local population within the respective districts. The comprehensive assessment of the socio-economic landscape encompassed various factors, including educational achievement, household size, occupational categorization, and monthly expenditure patterns. The assessment of the household's overall economic status was based on the economic wellbeing as a fundamental indicator. The Severity Incidence Index (SII) quantifies the gravity of the occurrence resulting from the ingestion of potentially arsenic-contaminated water. It has been observed that there exists a positive correlation between the concentration of arsenic in water and the corresponding SII values. This elucidates the direct correlation between the escalating levels of arsenic in water and the escalating magnitude of individuals susceptible to potential ailments associated with arsenic contamination. The present index exhibits a diminished numerical representation for the region afflicted by a relatively modest concentration of arsenic.
References
1. Ahmad, I., Haq, M. and Sattar, A. (2010). Factors Deter-mining Public Demand for Safe Drinking Water (A Case Study of District Peshawar) PIDE Work-ing Papers.
2. Census (2011). Census of India, Economic Survey of As-sam, 2011-12, Govt. of Assam. p7.
3. Chakraborty, D., Singh, S.K., Rahman, M.M., Dutta, R.N., Mukherjee, S.C., Pati, S., Kar, P.B. (2018). Groundwater Arsenic Contamination in the Gan-ga River Basin: A future Health Danger. Int J En-viron Res Public Health, 15(2): 180.
4. Chetia, M., Chatterjee, S., Banerjee, S., Nath, M. J., Singh, L., & Srivastava, R. B. (2010). Groundwater arse-nic contamination in Brahmaputra River Basin: A water quality assessment in Golaghat (Assam), India. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 173(1–4): 371–385.
5. GOA (2010). Public Health Engineering Department, Govt. of Assam data on number quality affected habitations and population in Assam.
6. GOA (2011). Annual report. Public Health Engineering Department, Government of Assam.
7. Gujarati, D.N. (1995). Regression on dummy variables, In, Basic Econometrics 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill In-ternational Editions, New Delhi, Pp 499-539
8. Jain, C.K. and Singh, R.D. (2012). Technological options for the removal of arsenic with special reference to South East Asia. J. Environ. Manage., 107: 1–18.
9. Kibria, G., Haroon, A. K. Y., Nugegoda, D., Rose, G. (2010). Health hazards of arsenic in drinking wa-ter and the environment. In: Health Effects of Ar-senic Contamination (pp. 1–25). Global Science Books.
10. Mahanta, R., Chowdhury, J, Nath, K.K. (2016). Health costs of arsenic contamination of drinking water in Assam India. Economic Analysis and Policy., 49: 30-42.
11. Mohan, D., and Pittmann C.U. Jr. (2007). Arsenic removal from water/wastewater using adsorbents – A crit-ical review, Journal of Hazardous material, 142: 1-53.
12. Mitra, A.K., Bose, B. K., Kabir, H., Das, B.K. and Hussain, M. (2002). Arsenic-related health prob-lems among hospital patients in Southern Bang-ladesh. Journal of Health, Population and Nutri-tion, 20(3):198-204.
13. Nickson, R., Sengupta, C., Mitra, P., Dave S. N., Banerjee, A.K., Bhattacharya, A., Basu, S., Kakoti, N., Moorthy, N.S., Wasuja, M., Kumar, M., Mishra,D.S., Ghosh, A., Vaish, D.P., Srivastava, A.K., Tripathi, R.M., Singh, S.N., Prasad, R., Bhattacharya S, and Deverill, P. (2007). Current knowledge on the distribution of arsenic in groundwater in five states of India. J. Environ. Sci. Health. A Tox Hazard Subst. Environ. Eng, 42(12): 1707-18.
14. Pearson, M., Jones-Hughes, T., Whear, R., Cooper, C., Peters, J., Evans E.H., and Depledge, M. (2011). Are interventions to reduce the impact of arsenic contamination of groundwater on human health in developing countries effective?: a systematic review protocol. Environmental Evidence, 1:1-7.
15. Saha, D., Sahu, S., Saxena, R., Kumar, M., & Dewandel, B. (2020). Occurrence and origin of arsenic in groundwater in parts of northeast India: A multi-disciplinary review. Environmental Earth Scienc-es, 79, 72.
16. Thakur, B.K., Gupta, V., Bhattacharya, P., Jakariya, M., Islam, M.T. (2021). Arsenic in drinking water sources in the Middle Gangetic Plains in Bihar: An assessment of the depth of wells to ensure safe water supply. Groundwater for Sustainable Development, 12: 100504.
17. Thakur, B.K., Gupta, V. (2025). Welfare estimation of groundwater arsenic contamination in India: In-sights for water policy. Journal of Cleaner pro-duction, 497: 145107.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2025 South India Journal of Social Sciences