Bangladesh Groundwater Woes Permanent - Geology Behind Arsenic Levels

[hatrack]

Hopes that the arsenic that contaminates well water in Bangladesh might naturally fall to safer levels were dashed this week with the discovery that the deep aquifers from which it is extracted receive an arsenic top-up every rainy season.

Groundwater from deep "tube wells" has been widely used for drinking water in Bangladesh since the 1970s, but it has emerged more recently that naturally occurring arsenic taints the water in many of the country's 10 million wells. A programme of testing wells and closing down those found to be tainted continues, but some 57 million Bangladeshis still drink water with unsafe arsenic levels, which can cause skin lesions and cancer.

It had been thought that the arsenic came from rock sediments deep underground, and that knowing where they were could lead to a long-term solution. But when Scott Fendorf and colleagues at Stanford University in California analysed core samples they found that the arsenic is in sediments close to the surface (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0509539103).

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18825303.000

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. Ground-water arsenic...

...of natural origin is a problem in some parts of the NE United States.

[Angry Girl]

2. And this is NOT a global emergency? 57 MILLION people????

No charities for this puppy that I've ever seen. Bechtel, think you could lend a hand here?

It numbs the mind.

[jody]

3. Bangladesh's population is over 144 million so thats 1/3 of the people. nt

[Angry Girl]

4. Horrific. And they're privatizing water like there's no tomorrow....

Oh, wait! Without water, there IS no tomorrow!

The Water Barons (Feb 2003)
A look at the world's top water companies
http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/business.html

The Water Barons (series of articles/reports)
From the Center for Public Integrity
http://www.icij.org/water/

[Bru]

5. Sad news...

I studied abroad in Bangladesh in January of 2004. On the way there we talked with a scientist who was going to do arsenic studies there...perhaps it was Mr. Fendorf or one of his colleagues. One day while studying in a rural village we helped set up a tube well.

It's sad because there are not really too many immediate solutions to the problem. Bangladeshis have to drink water from somewhere, and many of the precipitation-caused pools in villages are equally or more unhealthy to drink from.