Posted on 06/23/2010 9:45:30 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It's believed up to 77 million people have been exposed to toxic levels of arsenic from contaminated drinking water in Bangladesh. The Lancet medical journal reports the high arsenic exposure is the tragic result of a community development project in the 1970's that went terribly wrong. The UN's World Health Organisation is describing Bangladesh's arsenic crisis as "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history."
Presenter: Matt Abud Speakers: Dr Dipankar Chakraborti, head of School of Environmental Studies, Calcutta's Jadaypur University; Arif Ahamed, project team leader, World Bank .
ABUD: Over twenty percent of all deaths in the study were caused by arsenic poison in the water supply. That's one of the conclusions published in the Lancet medical journal this week.
The research followed almost twelve thousand people in the Araihazar region for six years. Just over four hundred died during this period, with over eighty of them as a direct result of arsenic build-up.
It provides hard data on a long-running public health crisis that experts knew was extremely bad- but not exactly how serious. The crisis began with a well-meaning, hugely-successful public health project. In the 1970s unclean surface drinking water led to widespread diarrhoea and other illnesses, and many deaths.
The Bangladesh government and aid organisations drilled millions of tube wells, to access water underground. For years, no-one realised the groundwater was itself contaminated, with natural arsenic.
The first signs of long-term arsenic poisoning are often blisters on the hands and feet, and then a wide range of possible cancers.
Dr. Dipankar Chakraborti was the first to prove the problem, when he saw evidence of poisoning on a home visit to neighbouring Bengal in 1996.
He says the impact has been enormous on communities and individuals.
CHAKRABORTI: Ranu the girl whom I saw, she was a beautiful lady. She was fifteen at that time in 1996, so 2009, thirteen years plus, but she looks like 50 years old. And those who are suffering, they're miserable. It's difficult to believe, that in those families mother, father, who are affected, many of them are divorced and other things. I cannot express to you how bad it is.
ABUD: Almost eighty percent of the people in the Lancet's study were exposed to arsenic levels above international safety standards - with most people's water contamination measuring fifteen times too high.
The highest level of arsenic exposure the study found was more than eighty-five times the recommended maximum. Arsenic poison builds up over time - and the Lancet study suggests that even low levels of exposure are risky.
The World Health Organisation has famously described this as 'the largest mass poisoning of a population in history'. But Dr. Dipankar Chakraborti says governments in Bangladesh and neighbouring India ignored his evidence for years.
Both medic and activist, he now heads up the School of Environmental Studies in Calcutta's Jadaypur University. He's highly-critical of government and international aid efforts to solve the problem.
CHAKRABORTI: This government is a hypocrite. They get the money, they're not involved with the people. My saying is that we have plenty of water in these affected areas. Like Bangladesh, everywhere is water, water, and water. If we could manage that with people's participation, this problem could be solved.
ABUD: In previous years the World Bank has funded the testing of tube wells for contamination - but the number of wells is enormous, and levels of contamination vary from place to place.
Now the Bank is running a pilot project to set up piped water to rural areas, as part of efforts to combat poisoning. Arif Ahamed is the project's team leader.
He says the government simply isn't putting in enough effort to solve the problem.
AHAMED: I would say they're not giving much priority in this sector. There's no policy guidelines or regulations of rural water supply up to now. Sometimes we see that after the project period, after installation of this infrastructure, things become ineffective or lying idle.
ABUD: Community awareness of the problem has increased - but it's only the first step.
AHAMED: Most of the households in rural areas, they install their own tube-wells. I would say that seven hundred thousand tube-wells have been installed in Bangladesh over the last decade.
Hinckley was foced to spending millions (in 30 yr bonds of course) to put in a new water system.
Some claim the low level arsenic helped keep cancer under control. Few have died there - tho with all the radiation from the open air testing, hard to say what killed some geezer - lots of folk out there in their late 80s+.
Also shows that liberals hiding the vastness of the FedGov are always going to be a problem.
It’s such a massive, man-made tragedy. Maybe now they can make money helping to provide treatment. Thanks for the synopsis, I do recall UNICEF and their well water drive. The UN and UNICEF seemed like a good idea at the start, but wow, have morphed over the years into something quite different, as in the food-for-sex scandals brushed under the rug.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.