Lab tests on groundwater at Ambad in Nashik found acute contamination: hexavalent chromium at 50.3 mg per litre. India’s safety limit is 0.05 mg per litre. That is over 1,000 times the allowed level. The polluted water also flows into the Godavari river through a drain at a Kumbh Mela ghat, according to the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), which released the lab report on October 8.
How bad is 1,000 times over the limit?
It is very bad. India’s drinking-water rule (the Bureau of Indian Standards, or BIS) says chromium should not cross 0.05 mg per litre. The Ambad sample showed 50.3 mg per litre. Divide one by the other and you get roughly 1,006.
Think of it this way. The safety line is a tiny cup of poison allowed in a full water tank. The Nashik sample holds more than a thousand such cups. You can even see it. SANDRP’s press note says the borewell water in the area has turned bright yellow. Clean water doesn’t turn yellow.
For scale: the World Health Organization’s provisional guideline for total chromium in drinking water is also 0.05 mg per litre. The US sets its limit at 0.1 mg per litre — India’s 0.05 rule is actually stricter. Nashik’s reading sails past both.
What is hexavalent chromium?
Chromium is a metal. It comes in two main forms. One form, trivalent chromium, is harmless and even needed by the body in tiny amounts. The other form — hexavalent chromium, written as Cr(VI) — is dangerous.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists hexavalent chromium as a Group 1 human carcinogen. That is their strongest category. It means scientists are sure it can cause cancer in people. Fact sheets on the chemical also link it to skin ulcers, stomach trouble, and kidney and liver damage.
It comes from industry. Electroplating units, metal-finishing plants, paint factories, and leather tanneries all use or release it. SANDRP says the likely source at Ambad is the industrial area nearby — the Ambad Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) zone, which has electroplating, metal finishing, and paint units.
The people living on this water
The worst part is who drinks it. SANDRP says many families at Ambad get little and patchy water supply from the Nashik Municipal Corporation. So they are forced to use the polluted borewell water for bathing, washing clothes, and cleaning utensils.
And it shows. People — including children and women — have suffered chemical ulcers, rashes, and blisters, SANDRP said. Young women and children have had painful, swollen lymph nodes and long-running illnesses. Two women in the affected settlement reported spontaneous miscarriages.
Read that line again carefully: reported miscarriages. SANDRP itself said, “The number can be higher. The link has to be assessed.” Nobody has yet proven the chromium caused them. But nobody has ruled it out either. That is an honest gap, and it matters.
Local activists Roshan Kedar and Rajesh Pandit raised the alarm with residents. SANDRP’s Parineeta Dandekar visited the site and got the water tested in an accredited lab. That is where the 50.3 mg/L figure comes from.
What have officials done?
Not much, if SANDRP is to be believed. The network said the official response has been “inadequate” despite repeated complaints.
Here’s what we don’t know yet: the coverage so far carries only SANDRP’s claims. There is no on-record response yet from the Nashik Municipal Corporation or the state pollution control board in these reports. No cleanup plan has been announced publicly. That silence is itself part of the story.
Nashik is not the first. Ranipet is the warning.
SANDRP compared the Nashik readings to Ranipet in Tamil Nadu and Rania in Kanpur Dehat — two of India’s worst chromium poisoning zones.
Ranipet is worth knowing about. The Tamil Nadu Chromates and Chemicals Limited (TCCL) factory there shut down in 1995. It left behind about 2.27 lakh tonnes of chromium-bearing waste heaped in its compound, three to five metres high, according to The Hindu. When it rains, yellow leachate still flows out of that heap and seeps into the ground. Experts say it has poisoned groundwater across a 30-km radius.
In 2006, the New York-based Blacksmith Institute put Ranipet on its list of the 10 worst polluted places in the world. Thirty years after the factory closed, a plan to clean it up — estimated at Rs 500 crore, per the New Indian Express — is still stuck. The poison outlived the factory by decades.
That is the real lesson for Nashik. Chromium in groundwater does not wash away in one monsoon. Once it is in the aquifer, it stays. Catching it early is everything.
What happens next
The immediate worry is the Kumbh Mela. The affected river stretch includes ghats where the Kumbh will be organised, SANDRP said, and the polluted drain empties into the Godavari right there. Millions of pilgrims will visit the city.
What should happen: the state pollution board tests the water itself, traces which units are leaking chromium, and cuts off the source. The municipal corporation should give the affected families clean water now — not after a report.
Whether that happens will decide if Ambad becomes another Ranipet, or the place where India finally acted in time.
