Pakistan’s drinking water is poisoned with lead and it’s killing people
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Barbarian invasions, economic inequality, social and moral collapse and a succession of incompetent and sometimes completely insane emperors; all these and more are blamed as the cause of the collapse of the Roman Empire. But there may have been another, far less visible, element at play here too: the drinking water favoured by upper-class Romans. More specifically, one culprit in the fall of one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen may have been the lead pipes that were used to transport water into the homes of elite Romans and the lead vessels in which they cooked their beverages. We now know that lead poisoning is deadly and causes a range of ailments from weakness and anaemia to brain and kidney damage. Young children are also particularly at risk, as lead poisoning leads to irreversible damage to the brain and nervous system which in turn leads to slowed growth and development, learning and behaviour problems, low intelligence and hearing and speech problems. High levels of lead exposure are also linked to early childhood death. Given that lead can cross the placental barrier, pregnant women exposed to lead pollution can also expose their unborn children, damaging the developing babies’ nervous system.
How bad was lead pollution in ancient Rome? A team of archeologists dredged the sediment going downstream from Rome to the maritime port of Portus and compared their findings with samples found in preserved Roman piping. They found that tap water from ancient Rome likely ‘contained up to 100 times more lead than local spring water.’ It’s safe to assume then, that one reason for the physical and mental degeneration of the Roman ruling classes may well have been their exposure to lead pollution. Note also, that even very low amounts of lead in the bloodstream are enough to wreak havoc to the system.
Centuries later, the problem hasn’t gone away, and what was once the disease of the Roman nobility is now the plague of the global South in general and – within that broad geographical dispensation – of the lower classes in particular.
The doctors then tested the soil at Shadipura to see if the foundries were the primary source of contamination and found that lead content in the soil was a staggering 22,900 parts per million. Note that the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency prohibits children from playing in soil that contains 400 ppm of lead.
Zarrar Khuhro
This was evident when earlier this year, a team of doctors associated with the Haqooq-e-Khalq movement set up a health clinic in Lahore’s Shadipura industrial area. People arrived in droves and soon the doctors found that almost all of them, young and old, male and female, were exhibiting similar symptoms: blackened gums and lips, a loss of coordination and balance along with impaired cognitive faculties. And almost all of them reported some form of chest and abdominal pain. The children’s plight was even worse, with many children showing signs of physical and mental stunting, appearing far younger than their actual age both in appearance and behaviour.
Suspecting lead poisoning, the team contacted Professor Nausheen Zaidi, a cancer biologist, to conduct blood tests to determine if the team’s hypothesis was correct. That’s where the first problem presented itself: no local laboratory had the capacity to even conduct such a test, and so the team had to go through the expense of sending the samples abroad and paying thousands of rupees for a test that should cost only a few hundred.
The results were horrific, if not unexpected: lead levels in the blood of those tested were abnormally high, proving that the doctors’ hunch was correct: the entire population of Shadipura was suffering from lead poisoning.
Why? Shadipura is home to numerous workshops, waste from which had contaminated the soil and filtered into the water supply. Close to Shadipura are also iron foundries that melt down scrap metals, many of which contain lead. This process releases pollutants that then pass into the air and subsequently into the soil and water.
When the team took their findings to the Water and Sanitation Department (WASA) they were greeted first with the denial that is the calling card of most such organisations. This wasn’t WASA’s jurisdiction, they were told, and even if it was, there was no proof that the lead was entering the bodies of locals through the water supply. Dr Zaidi’s team then tested the tap water in Shadipura and confirmed that high levels of lead were present. WASA, for its part, maintains that the reservoir that supplies this water is uncontaminated and that the pollutants may have entered the water supply from other sources. This fairly typical evasion notwithstanding, the doctors then tested the soil at Shadipura to see if the foundries were in fact the primary source of contamination and found that lead content in the soil was a staggering 22,900 parts per million. That number is incomprehensible without context, so note that the United States’ Environmental protection agency prohibits children from playing in soil that contains 400 ppm of lead. The lead content in Shadipura’s soil is almost 60 times that level.
The team persevered and kept sending samples to the authorities, along with test results from various labs. Each and every time authorities rejected the reports, saying that the results from tests conducted by the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR) showed no such contamination. To put the PCSIR to the test, Dr Zaidi deliberately spiked bottles containing commercially bought high-brand mineral water with ridiculously high levels of lead – more than ten times the permissible level - and sent these to the PCSIR for testing. Lo and behold, these spiked samples were also declared fit for human consumption.
This is the story of just one neighborhood in just one city of Pakistan and it is safe to say that such poisoned communities can be found across the length and breadth of this land. The question arises: What can the locals do when the authorities refuse to even acknowledge the problem? Switching to bottled water for all their needs is impossible, and it is beyond their means to install filtration systems at scale. Traditional methods for removing contaminants don’t work here either, because boiling the water would only result in the lead content becoming even more concentrated. Perhaps the only way forward is to take the authorities to court and force them to take action. This is what the Haqooq-e-Khalq activists plan to do.
Rome at least had its long period of glory before it succumbed to its internal weaknesses; we may fall victim to our own poisons before even having our moment in the sun.
- Zarrar Khuhro is a Pakistani journalist who has worked extensively in both the print and electronic media industry. He is currently hosting a talk show on Dawn News. Twitter: @ZarrarKhuhro
