INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Climate breakdown will put tens of millions of people in Bangladesh at heightened risk of cancer from contaminated well water, according to
research.Sea level rises, unpredictable flooding and extreme weather caused by the climate heating up will accelerate the release of
a public health crisis already gripping the country, where millions have skin, bladder and lung cancers as a result of arsenic
Frisbie, an emeritus professor of chemistry at Norwich University, in a recent presentation of the findings
sponsored a vast programme of deep tube well boring to provide clean water for domestic use, crop irrigation and fish farming
The new wells reduced rates of child deaths by curtailing the spread of waterborne diseases, but by the 1990s it became clear that water
drawn from sedimentary rocks beneath Bangladesh contained high levels of naturally occurring arsenic.The first case of chronic arsenic
poisoning from drinking well water was diagnosed in Bangladesh in 1993 and the World Health Organization would go on to describe it as the
makes the arsenic insoluble and removes it from the water
But the deep well water does not communicate as well with the oxygen in the atmosphere
poisoning leads to a buildup of arsenic inside the bodies of those affected
It manifests externally through keratinisation of skin on the palms and the soles of the feet
Similar processes are also under way inside, and deposits gather in their lungs and other internal organs, causing cancers.Wells in about
49% of areas contained drinking water that exceeded the maximum WHO limit of 10 parts per billion, Frisbie said
About 45% contain water with at least five times that much arsenic
During his fieldwork, Frisbie tested water from one well with an arsenic concentration of 448 parts per billion.skip past newsletter
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current estimate is about 78 million Bangladeshis are exposed, and I believe a conservative estimate is that about 900,000 Bangladeshis are
arsenic from its sediment.At the same time, seawater ingress into the aquifer, another result of rising sea levels, will increase its
colleagues in their study, published on Wednesday in the journal Plos One.The implications of the change in the underlying chemistry of
This article first appeared/also appeared in theguardian.com
