The government deigns to recognise the arsenic problem only in West Bengal and one district of Bihar. But recent studies prove the presence of the contaminant in several other states too: Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

As early as 1991, the Jadavpur University of West Bengal and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) discovered that arsenic was plaguing the Rajnandgoan district, which is now in Chhattisgarh. Of the 146 water samples tested by the university, 8.3 per cent had arsenic concentration above 50 parts per billion (ppb)