Eye Opener: Summary of Reading 18: Attacking an Arsenic Plague

This article was really short, yet very interesting. This article was written by Helen Epstein in 2002 about arsenic poisoning in the drinking water in rural Bangladesh. Arsenic has become a natural element in their drinking water. Due to this, thousands of people will die from cancer caused by the arsenic, and thousands more will suffer from skin lesion caused by the arsenic.

The World Bank gave the Bangladesh government 32.4 million to help them determine which wells are safe. The book explains that the Bangladesh goverment is very corrupt, therefore this money offering "is hampered both by its notorious bureaucracies and the sheer scale of the problem: Some 10 million private wells need testing" (McKinney 71).

This article discusses two new inventions that are hoped to help test and/or clean the water.

• The first invention was made by Pietro Perona, a Caltech electrical engineer. The device called the arsonometer. This device will turn the water blue if there is arsenic in it. This device seems very complicated, and there are ways that the test results can be off. So I, personally, don't feel like this device is the best way to go.
• The second invention was made by Fakhurl Islam, a chenist at Bangladesh's Rahshahi University. This device is a cheap filter that strips arsenic from drinking water. (McKinney 71) The dust particles that can do this com in 20 kg bags that cost three dollars. This bag of dust particles can filter 3,000 liters of water. Once the liter is full, it can be tossed out without worry of spreading the arsenic. This invention sounds like a much better way to go.

Hopefully these two devices can help stop the arsenic poisoning that is going on.

Here are a couple of articles that explain the current controversy on arsenic poisoning:

Arsenic in Groundwater Research and Rhetoric

This article is based off a study that finds that the arsenic posioning in groudwater is caused by the indiscriminate (careless) use of chemicals to improve agriculture. This finding challenges the conclusion reached by other parties that thought that the issue is basically geologic in nature (SOS-arsenic.net). There is arsenic in coal that is found in the ground. When combined with rainwater, it dissolves and can run into the groundwater that is used in wells.

Bangladesh’s arsenic poisoning: who is to blame?

I really thought this article was interesting. This article explains how this poisoning began. UNICEF and the World Bank gave money to Bangladesh to help them provide clean drinking water to their population. Unfortunately no one tested the water for arsenic, which is common in groundwater, before providing wells to people. Then when people got sick from the arsenic, the doctors decided not to make a big deal of the information, so more and more people kept on getting sick. Now that this issue is finally publically know, the main problem is finding all of the wells. The article says that it will take roughly 30 years to do this. I wonder how many more will get sick?
The other really interesting this that I read had UNICEF saying that they didn't test before they dug all of the wells because there weren't tests in the 1970s that would detect arsenic poisoning in the geological formations in Bangladesh. A geochemist from University College London laughed at this comment.

So my question for discussion is: Who do you think is to blame for this mass poisoning?


Have a Great Day!!!