This preliminary study reports for the first time that part of the rural population in the Allahabad district and the urban population in the Suklaganj-Kanpur of Unnao district in the Allahabad-Kanpur track of the upper Ganga plain are drinking and using for agricultural irrigation arsenic contaminated water (maximum arsenic concentrations in drinking water and urine are 707 and 1744 mg L-1 respectively) mostly from shallow hand tube-wells (depth 7.5-40 m) without knowing that these are arsenic contaminated. © 2009 The Royal Society of Chemistry.