Nairobi parents living in 'posh' estates raise alarm as children's teeth turn brown with borehole water use

With apartment blocks going higher and higher in what appears to be an effort to scrape the sky, the strain on scarce resources that were not meant to cater for so many buildings is evident.

One of the problems many residents have brought out is the strain on boreholes.

A resident of Nairobi's Lavington area, William Sirengo, says that when he first moved to an apartment block in the area over a decade ago, the building was one of few in the area, but today, there are an uncountable number of apartments in the area.

"Our apartment block has only five floors, now there's an apartment block that was built that is towering over us. It is 14 floors."

Sirengo says that while the skyscappers are a concern because it infringes on residents' privacy, a bigger problem is the strain on boreholes that has led to estates digging further down to access water, but the quality of the water is wanting.

"We cannot rely on city council water because it hardly gets to our taps. We rely on borehole water, but it is highly flourinated," he said.

Sirengo said parents in the estate started to notice a trend among their children whereby their teeth started browning and placed it down to the borehole water.

"It's very unfortunate that we are living in what is supposed to be a decent neighbourhood, but the water is pathetic. Residents decided to conduct tests on the state of the borehole water and it was found to be highly flourinated. More than 10 times the recommended levels," he said.

Residents have now been forced to invest in installing water filtration systems, while the estate has brought together funds in a bid to buy a central water filtration system which they can buy water from for use when cooking and for brushing teeth.

Njoki Munene, a dentist in Nairobi, says, "We are seeing more and more parents bringing in their children with browning teeth which are brittle because of the levels of flouride in the water. It's not enough to buy those water dispensers with filters because those mostly remove bacteria and rust from borehole water, but not flouride. For flouride, it's better to get a reverse osmosis system which in addition to removing bacteria and odour, also deals with the flouride."