Inside a hot, dun-colored courtyard, Jagdev Singh, a wheelchair-using boy of 15, jerks his body fruitlessly in search of relief. "I can't swat the flies off of my face," he says.
A debilitating muscular disorder prevents the teen from raising his arms more than few inches above his lap. Doctors say he suffers from too much urea in his bloodstream - a chemical fertilizer used in the wheat, rice and cotton fields that surround this village of 3,300 inhabitants in northwestern Punjab state. Three other children in nearby villages have a similar malady, residents say.
Singh's illness is caused by environmental pollutants, according to activists, government scientists and academics.
"What are you achieving by feeding people at the cost of their health?" said G.P.I. Singh, no relation to Jagdev Singh, who heads the department of community medicine at Dayanand Medical College in the city of Ludhiana.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/27/MN3M11LLJQ.DTL
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