Arsenic in Drinking Water
A.
- Pinjra Begum used to collect drinking water for her family
- Married at age 15
- Her skin began to turn blotchy, then ultimately gangrenous and repulsive
- In 2000 she died of cancer, at 26 years of age, leaving three children
- In the 1970s and 1980s the Bangladesh gov- ernment, along with international aid agencies spearheaded by UNICEF, undertook an ambitious project to bring clean water to the nation’s villages
- Children were dying of diar- rhea from drinking surface water contaminated with bacteria
- Everybody neglected to check the water for Arsenic
- Today around 30 percent of Bangla- desh’s tubewells are known to yield more than 50 micrograms of arsenic per liter of water, with 5 to 10 percent providing more than six times this amount
- Bangladeshis may be ingesting arsenic through a second route: the grain they eat two or three times a day
- The mineral occurs in the water supply of communities in diverse countries, such as India, Nepal, Vietnam, China, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Taiwan, Mongolia and the U.S
- The first sign of poisoning, which may appear as long as 10 years after someone starts drinking arsenic-laden water, is black spots on the upper chest, back and arms, known as melanosis
- Drinking water with high levels of ar- senic can also lead to neurological and cardiovascular complications
- Bangladesh health system is unprepared for a crisis of this magnitude
- The nation is largely a delta, formed by silt deposited over 250 million years by two great Himalayan rivers, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra
- Arsenic is associated with iron pyrites and enters the aquifers by an oxidation process
- Human activity is aggravating the arsenic problem
- The government created the Bangladesh Arsenic Mit- igation and Water Supply Project in 1998, to which effort the World Bank provided a loan of $32.5 million
- Villagers in the two regions where we researched solutions to the arsenic problem: Sonargaon to the east and Jhikargacha to the west: would scarcely believe that their health problems arose from their precious tubewells
B. After many mysterious deaths in Bangladesh which the cause was unknown. However, after further studies were conducted, it was determined that it was the water that was the culprit of these deaths. The reason for the water being so dangerous is because of an element called Arsenic. Arsenic is a poison that has killed millions of people. Most of these deaths usually occur in developing countries. There are many side effects for drinking this poisonous water. For example, an individual can contract a bad skin reaction, diarrhea, as well as cancer. There are many people in Bangladesh that believe that their wells and water ways were safe but after further investigation, it was found that the aquifers were liked to wells that people get water from were had high contamination levels of Arsenic. After this discovery, the Bangladesh government had stated that ingesting more than 50 mg (micro grams) of water is considered a deadly dose of Arsenic for humans. Another way of getting Arsenic contamination is through their rice products. Arsenic is not only found in Bangladesh however. There are Arsenic products in areas like India, Nepal, Vietnam, China, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Taiwan, Mongolia, as well as the United States. We need to stop Arsenic contamination for good if we want to live better lives.
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C. I was very saddened after reading about Pinjra Begum and her story. I am very concerned about developing countries considering that they are not educated about certain dangerous things like Arsenic in the water and they have no means of combating this terrible poison. There has to be a solution to this problem and I believe that us, the developed countries have a moral responsibility to try and find that solution. It is not fair for these people that are already struggling to be poison with a element that they are completely oblivious to. A big step in the right direction for trying to fix this problem is education. Being educated about problems like this is probably one of the most important solutions. If the people in these developing countries are educated, then they would know better not to drink out of the poisonous water that they are drinking. We are also apart of this problem considering that there are arsenic found products within the US so I think we should help ourselves as well as other developing countries.
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