Fluoride Occurrences in Drinking Water,
Health Problems and Remediation Methods 

Water is the most fundamental requirement for the living species to endure livelihood. However, the exponentially growing contamination is a significant area to focus on regarding environmental health and its degradation [1]. For instance, around 783 million people have no access to potable drinking water [2]. In the same string, the fluoride-based salts naturally occur in the groundwater. It is persistent distress and hazardous pollutant when present beyond the permissible limit according to World Health Organisation [3]. Groundwater is a predominantly affected water source as compared to surface water which may be due to the volcanic disasters, weathering or conveyed by air/water [4]. Also, existence of fluoride in rocks and minerals, namely, fluorspar, sellaite, fluoroapatite, villiaumite, etc. leads to the dissolution in water stream.

The presence of fluoride has been highly aggravated due to increased anthropogenic pursuits emerging as an outcome from industrial sectors like aluminium, semiconductor, steel, bricks, pesticides and fertilizers. It was inferred that fluoride contamination is severely inevitable [5]. Besides this, some researcher observed that fluoride content may vary from 250 mg/L to 1,500 mg/L and in extreme situations can vary up to 10,000 mg/L in industrial effluent [6]. Accretion of fluoride influences could also be due to organic tissues from living beings, soil, and water, which result in detrimental health issues [7]. Therefore, it is emerging as a significant issue for the environment and public health. The Bureau of Indian Standards (IS 10500, 2012) and World Health Organisation (WHO 2011) prescribe an upper limit of 1.0 and 1.5 mg/L, respectively. It exceeds beyond the desired level in various places from the world, namely, China, Argentina, Middle East, Italy, Mexico, Mongolia, India, Netherlands, Poland, Norway, West Indies, Pakistan, Spain, UK, and various areas of the African continent and few regions of America. Therefore, this issue can be categorised as global problem [8].

Moreover, some investigation revealing the geographical statistics of Indian regions prone with the huge contamination of fluoride include Jalalabad and Fazilka of Punjab [9], major part of Rewari, Hisar, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Fatehabad regions of Haryana [10–12], Rae Bareilly, Unnao and Sonbhadra of Uttar Pradesh [13–15], some districts of Madhya Pradesh (Sidhi, Tikamgarh), Maharastra (Beed), Andhra Pradesh (Nalgonda), and Tamil Nadu (Dindigul). Other moderately marked regions include Karbi, Golaghat, Karimganj, Naugaon, Kaimur, Munger, Bundi, Chhitorgarh, Udaipur, Jalgaon among others [16-22]. Furthermore, it has been established that fluoride rich water is present in 19 Indian states, with Rajasthan topping the list with the most affected areas. The state has some of the worst affected areas in the country.

Digging into the root level issues of fluoride problems, it has been reported to affect the metabolism in the living body, leading to various severe health-related problems [23]. It is also anabolic species stimulating cell classifications and could attach with organic elements like enzymes, which inhibit its pursuits at both milli and micro levels. Dental and skeletal fluorosis is a severe problem, and arthritis, bone damage, osteoporosis, etc., are highly evident diseases. Initially, there could be muscular damages, fatigue, joint-related issues and chronicle issues. In extreme conditions, it could adversely damage the heart, arteries, kidney, liver, endocrine glands, neuron system, and several other delicate items [24–26].

Stated drawbacks led to severe demand for fluoride removal which is a challenging part in water treatment and recovery field because fluoride is highly reactive. Its ionic measurements also make it difficult to be treated [8]. Several investigators attempted to treat fluoride rich streams by enormous engineering processes including coagulation, adsorption, electrocoagulation, reverse osmosis, nano-filtration, and electro dialysis [8,27]. But these conventionally established approaches have limitations such as complexity, the chemical agent’s additions, huge operational economics, and voluminous generation of sludge leading to secondary pollutions. This problem is prevailing across the country with very high severity being reported in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. For the same reason, thousands of de-fluoridation plants have been installed based on coagulation (Alum coagulant) and adsorption (activated alumina) based processes.

However, coagulation-based plants were examined with the limitations such as high maintenance cost, large amount of sludge generation, large space requirements, and an increase in total dissolved salts and residual aluminium concentrations in the treated water. In rural area adsorption techniques are emerging as the major processes for de-fluoridation due to their simplicity over the other techniques, but it has constraints moderate residual aluminium, high cost of adsorbents, complexity of regeneration process of adsorbent and issues of waste disposal, which make this technique difficult to sustain. Another predominantly used approach for de-fluoridation is Nalgonda technique, which is banned in Rajasthan due to the high aluminium residual content.

Therefore, there is a dire need to develop such a unit which could be cost effective and easy to handle with a potential of sustainable long-term use.■

References:

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  2. Y. Singh Solanki, M. Agarwal, S. Gupta, P. Shukla, K. Maheshwari, M.O. Midda, Application of synthesized Fe/Al/Ca based adsorbent for defluoridation of drinking Water and its significant parameters optimization using response surface methodology, J. Environ. Chem. Eng. 7 (2019) 103465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jece.2019.103465.

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  13. S.K.J.A.K.N.Y.K. Sharma, Fluoride occurrence and assessment of exposure dose of fluoride in shallow aquifers of Makur , Unnao district Uttar Pradesh , India, (2009) 561–566. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-008-0505-1.

  14. U. Pradesh, Contamination of nitrate and fluoride in ground water along the Ganges Alluvial Plain of Kanpur district , (2008) 375–382. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-007-0085-5.

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  26. A. Halder, S. Singh, A. Adhikari, P. Singh, P.K. Sarkar, U. Pal, R. Ghosh, D. Shikha, Y.S. Solanki, M. Agarwal, A.B. Gupta, R. Chakraborty, T. Saha-Dasgupta, R. Das, S.K. Pal, Selective and Fast Responsive Sensitized Micelle for Detection of Fluoride Level in Drinking Water, ACS Sustain. Chem. Eng. 7 (2019) 16355–16363. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b03447.

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Yogendra Singh Solanki
yssolanki@devalt.org
 

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