Already about five million people in 578 villages of West Bengal are drinking water containing arsenic above 0.05 mg per litre.

About three lakh people are suspected to be suffering from skin lesions due to arsenic contamination. It is a serious public health problem in neighbouring Bangladesh which is considered to be the world's largest arsenic-affected area.

Now a joint team of researchers from Jadhavpur University and Calcutta Medical College, and Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) at Raipur has found arsenic contamination in Koudikasa village in Rajnandgaon district of MP.

"We do not know how many more states in India may have similar arsenic contamination of groundwater," the report by D Chakraborti and colleagues, warns in the journal CurrentScience.

People drinking water from tubewells and dug-wells in the affected areas in Chowki block in Rajnandgaon district suffer from skin lesions caused by arsenic intake, the report says.

The Rajnandgaon district, located in south-east Madhya Pradesh, is an agrarian district with a dense forest and population of 1.5 million.

Most of the villagers in Koudikasa use water from a forest dug-well which contains 0.52 mg of arsenic per litre.

Another PHED tubewell which the villagers were using along with the forest dug-well was found to contain 0.88 mg per litre and was sealed a few months ago.

Preliminary analysis by the team shows Koudikasa was the most affected.