SUNS 4344 Monday 14 December 1998
BANGLADESH: ARSENIC POISONING HAMPERS SAFE WATER GAINS
Dhaka, Dec 10 (IPS/Tabibul Islam) -- The contamination of ground water with arsenic has turned into the most serious of Bangladesh's health problems, but relief will take time to reach the villages.
In August, the World Bank approved $32.4 million for a "fast track Arsenic Mitigation project" which will provide safe drinking water and emergency relief to people living in affected areas.
But activities are still confined to surveys and collecting information about the detrimental effects on people living in affected areas. Some 65 million people across 52 of the country's 64 districts are believed to be affected.
The project will initially survey 4,000 arsenic affected villages where shallow and deep tubewells are to be fitted with filters, and local people encouraged to return to traditional water harvesting methods.
In urban areas, the project will monitor water quality and support local authorities with remedial strategies including alternative water supply and treatment facilities.
An international conference on arsenic pollution in Dhaka earlier in the year had concluded that the supply of arsenic free water was the only solution to this very serious problem in Bangladesh.
The roughly 200 participants pledged to share information on arsenic contamination and assist in raising awareness and finding an affordable treatment that would benefit poor countries like Bangladesh.
Creeping arsenic in ground water has turned into a global problem, with 18 countries including Mongolia, India, Taiwan, Japan, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Poland, and the United States believed to be at risk. The exact cause of arsenic contamination of ground water is still to be ascertained, and there are various theories.
For long it was widely believed that excessive and unplanned exploitation of ground water for irrigation was the main reason in Bangladesh where seven million hectares of land have been brought under the irrigation network.
Recently the British Geological Survey team completed the first phase of ground water surveys in Bangladesh testing more than 9,000 samples from shallow tubewells and field investigations.
"There is clear evidence that arsenic contamination is natural," the Survey revealed in a preliminary study publicised here, which is still open to debate.
Whether crops grown in arsenic contaminated soil accumulate the toxic compound in plant tissues was also debated recently by the Bangladesh Agriculture University alumni network.
Research scientist A.H. Jafforullah now working in New Orleans, United States, suggested low cost filters as a solution for purifying drinking water in the country. Jute fibre filters can remove lead, iron and arsenic from water due to the presence of "lingo-cellulose" in both kenaf and jute.
"Everything that is needed to produce a low-cost activated charcoal filter exists in Bangladesh," Jafforullah who was here on a visit, said while arguing that elimination of arsenic from ground water was an impossible goal.
The arsenic menace has been the flip side of the government's very successful programme of universalising access to clean water in large parts of this low-lying country.
Health authorities were slow to react to the disaster, even though the first case of contamination was detected in 1993. Only over the last year has the process of identifying contaminated tubewells been taken up.
Initiated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Public Health Engineering Department and the Health Directorate of the government, tubewells in 200 affected villages have been painted red to warn villagers.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), water that contains more than 0.05 mg per litre of arsenic is unsuitable for drinking. Studies have confirmed contamination in many parts of the country where victims are scarred by lesions and black and white spots as most cases of poisoning go undetected in the early stages.
In some villages in the north and west, villagers are staying away from tubewells where they have gone back to drinking unclean pond water because of fear of arsenic poisoning.
"Arsenic in drinking water poses the highest cancer risk ever found," said Dr Allan H. Smith, an epidemiologist from California University, who has visited Bangladesh three times this year on behalf of WHO, but "we still don't know how many millions have been exposed and at what levels".
Babar N. Kabir, a World Bank hydrologist here, believes arsenic contamination is a "major emergency" in Bangladesh, echoing the views of Prof Dipankar Chakravarty of Jadavpur University, in India, who was the first to detect arsenic toxicity in ground water in adjoining West Bengal state.
Chakravarty has put Bangladesh on top of the list of affected countries, followed by India. In both countries, health authorities are working at solutions.