Behind the 'Snow Hills' Tourists Love: Toxic Marble Dust Is Poisoning Villages Near India's Kishangarh Dump Yard

In Kishangarh, in India's Rajasthan state, white mounds and blue water-filled pits stretch across 300 acres (121 hectares) — a landscape that looks like a snow-clad hillside. Locally known as the "Snow Yard", it is in fact the largest marble slurry dumping yard of its kind in Asia, sitting in Ajmer district in an otherwise arid state, and it attracts hundreds of tourists every day. Entry to the site is free.

Newlyweds pose against the snowy backdrop, couples organise pre-wedding photoshoots here, and social media influencers throng the landfill to make reels; music videos and movies are also frequently shot at the site. Salim Shahzada, a businessman from Uttar Pradesh state, said everyone from his five-year-old niece to his mother loved the place, and their first impression was that it looks like Kashmir. He had visited a couple of times and decided to bring his family along this time.

But Shahzada had no idea about the health and environmental problems linked to the dumping yard. He said he only knew that this is where marble cutting waste is dumped and that the hill itself is made of this waste.

Six kilometres (four miles) from Kishangarh, in the village of Bhogiyawas, Bagharam Gurjar, 53, pulls weeds from his maize field as the sound of his wife coughing nearby makes him restless. "Everything gets ruined when dust settles on the soil," he says. Between bouts of chronic cough, his wife replies: "May God make everything right — otherwise, it becomes difficult to grow crops."

The Gurjars are among nearly 5,000 people living in the vicinity of the unusual tourist destination. Gurjar said the yard has affected residents in at least six villages: people are suffering from chest infections, dental problems and skin allergies, whether they are children or elderly. He and his wife are forced to take regular medicines for chest infections or skin problems.

Kishangarh is a marble and granite hub, home to nearly 1,200 processing units, with total daily business estimated at more than 160 million rupees ($1.7m), providing jobs to about 25,000 people, according to the Federation of Indian Granite and Stone Industry. Every day, nearly 1,000 tankers carry slurry from those units and empty roughly 5,500 tonnes of waste on the government-allotted dump site — which, for the people living nearby, has turned into a health hazard.

Aditi Goyal, a general physician at Ajmer's Ganga Narayan Hospital, said the residents of Kishangarh face several health risks, mainly respiratory and skin problems, and that workers in the marble processing units are more vulnerable to chronic illnesses because of prolonged exposure to toxic dust. Cases of respiratory problems have increased significantly in the area over the last couple of years, she said, advising people to wear masks to protect themselves from the dust.

The same dust settles on the fields, hardening the soil and making it difficult to grow crops. A study led by Laxmi Kant Sharma, a professor in the department of environmental science at the Central University of Rajasthan, found that the concentration of lead silicate in Kishangarh's soil was several times higher than normal, indicating extreme contamination. Since the waste particles are smaller than 75 micrometres, the study said, they can spread far and wide, making the soil infertile.

The study also found that the concentration of PM2.5 exceeds the limit of ambient air quality standards, and warned that several people may be suffering from silicosis. The government needs to take immediate action to prevent the situation from getting out of hand, it said.

Ugam Singh, 65, another resident of Bhogiyawas, said the situation has worsened to such an extent that even the groundwater is no longer fit for consumption. The fluoride levels in the water are so high that it tastes salty; his teeth have started decaying and his bones have become weak. Singh said residents of the surrounding villages have complained to the authorities, including officials of the Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board (RSPCB), but their requests fell on deaf ears.

Last year, local environmentalist Drupad Malik filed a case before the National Green Tribunal over the harmful health and environmental effects of the Kishangarh dumping yard. The tribunal observed that unregulated dumping of marble slurry was contaminating groundwater and air, and directed the RSPCB to enforce monitoring, conduct sample inspections and penalise the marble processing units violating environmental norms. A senior official at the RSPCB's regional office in Kishangarh refused to speak on the matter.

Professor Sharma said the areas surrounding the dumping yard are unfit for human settlement, and that his research was shared with state authorities but nothing was done to improve conditions. He pressed for the dumping yard to be shifted to a place where there is no human contact, and suggested that using slurry in tile manufacturing could, to some extent, help reduce pollution. He also expressed surprise that people are allowed to visit the site without masks and even eat food there.

Ram Lal, a resident of Tokra village, about a 15-minute drive from Bhogiyawas, appealed to the government to find an alternative site for dumping the marble slurry, and demanded that free medical camps be set up to assess people whose health has declined because of the fine dust particles that have been flying in the air and settling there for years. "No one from our village can afford it if someone develops a disease that costs thousands of rupees to treat," he said.