One threat to the physical capital of the case study village’s residents is a kidney disease of uncertain origin. It is widely assumed and confirmed that the water in the North Central Province is highly contaminated with chemicals, organic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, animal farm fallout, septic tank water and domestic waste. Most rivers in Sri Lanka originate in the central highlands where high amounts of metals from the phosphate and organic fertilizers used in tea cultivation enter and contaminate the rivers and are thus carried into the Dry Zone. Kidney disease is most prevalent in areas with extensive paddy cultivation that are directly irrigated using water diverted from the Mahaweli River. Here, the downstream water shows higher amounts of sulphate and nitrite, which accumulate in the lower tanks of the tank chain. Particularly remote villages demonstrate the highest numbers of cases of kidney disease, presumably because their residents drink wewawater (Diyabalanage et al. 2016: 679).

In the most extreme case, this kidney disease can lead to complete kidney failure, but even in its milder form it hinders the affected individuals from working and makes frequent hospital appointments necessary. This poses a great threat to their economic and physical capital, since the sick have to invest money in the regular transportation to Anuradhapura hospital. The treatment is free, but it is also frequent so that the transportation costs constitute a considerable expenditure. Furthermore, on treatment days the affected individuals are unable to work and miss out on earnings. With further advancement of the disease, the patient becomes highly dependent on family members, mostly wives and mothers whose time and chances of earning income as thus also diminished.

While no cases of this kidney disease were reported in the case study village, the residents are very conscious of the topic and pointed out neighbouring and more rural villages with some affected residents. All interview partners considered over-fertilizing to be the cause of water contamination and take measures to diminish the possibility of falling sick, whereby the economically wealthy tend to be better able to preserve their physical capital.  The wealthy residents bought 25-liter bottles of filtered water for drinking and cooking. The less wealthy residents had water filters for tap water, which – according to them – would filter out almost all chemicals and metals. Residents that displayed the least economic wealth boiled wewawater. Since several chemical ingredients of fertilizers cannot be extracted by boiling, health impacts cannot be avoided completely through this practice (Diyabalanage et al. 2016: 682).