Arsenic in wells threatens the health of millions of Bangladeshis

Mennonite Central Committee
Saturday, 19 February 2000

DHAKA, Bangladesh --Until the mid-1970s rural Bangladeshis drank water from ponds, rivers and streams. Cholera killed thousands and diarrhea caused the deaths of some 250,000 children yearly. To address these problems Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and other agencies, along with Bangladesh's government, developed water supply and sanitation programs that continue today. Now Bangladesh has about 4 million wells, many of them using the unique "rower pump" developed by MCC engineers in the late 1970s. About 95 percent of Bangladesh's 130 million people currently use well water for drinking and water-borne diseases have been drastically reduced.

Now a new problem has emerged, which threatens the health of millions of Bangladeshis. Arsenic has been discovered in wells. (See sidebar.)

In the mid-1990s, Bangladesh's government tested water in Bangladesh, adjacent to areas in India where arsenic had also been found in wells. These and subsequent tests revealed high levels of arsenic in many wells in southern and eastern Bangladesh, including in the Noakhali area where MCC agricultural programs work with 3,000 poor farmers and their families.

Arsenic is being found in underground water at different depths and concentrations, pointing to natural geological actions rather than human activities.

Arsenic is an invisible poison with no taste or smell. Symptoms of arsenic poisoning take several years to develop and in some cases, can be reversed when uncontaminated water is consumed. The body is able to rid itself of small amounts of arsenic, but prolonged exposure results in dry, cracked skin on the feet and palms, blackening and spotting of the skin, which can develop into open lesions, and in extreme cases, ulcers, gangrene, respiratory difficulty and cancer.

The government of Bangladesh has not initiated a unified response to the arsenic problem. As a result, many misconceptions, fears and an overwhelming lack of accurate scientific data remain.

In Noakhali where MCC works, an estimated 79 percent of the wells have arsenic levels higher than the 0.05 mg of arsenic/litre of water standard set by the World Health Organization. MCC has been working to develop a simple, cost-effective treatment system appropriate for rural Bangladeshi villages. While many arsenic removal methods exist, most are too "high-tech" to be effective and require a large amount of money to purchase and maintain.

MCC encourages people to remove arsenic by treating a bucket-full of water with aluminum sulfate and letting it stand for two hours to allow the particles to settle. The top two-thirds of the water is then filtered through sand, which removes most of the remaining arsenic. Aluminum sulfate has traditionally been used in rural Bangladesh to remove soil particles from water. However, the resulting water has significant aluminum content, even after filtering. Although the amount of aluminum is within acceptable levels, it is a factor that requires more research.

MCC has established an Arsenic Remediation Project, supervised by an inter-program committee made up of North American MCC volunteers and local staff. MCC needs contributions to fund the committee's work to find a solution to the arsenic problem. Checks can be mailed to any MCC office, designated for project #702-1020.

From promoting rower pumps in the 1980s to removing arsenic in the 1990s, for MCC workers in Bangladesh, Jesus' directive to give a cup of water continually takes on new meaning.

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org