WHO calls it 'largest mass poisoning of a population in history'
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comArsenic water killing 1 in 5 in Bangladesh
Seeded on Sun Jun 27, 2010 1:32 PM EDT (msnbc.com)
- msnbc.com sites & shows:
- TODAY
- Rock Center
- Nightly News
- Meet the Press
- Dateline
- Morning Joe
- Hardball
- Ed
- Maddow
- Last Word
- msnbc tv
Leave a Comment:
Yet ANOTHER "See, the BP spill isn't so bad" story. How many different stories has that been in the last two weeks? Even more interesting, who is telling the media to run these stories?
americans need to be reminded that other people are always more miserable than they regardless of the catastrophe of the moment
anon00 you are so rite!!!!! It is another case of the media manipulating the public. Running stories to detract attention away from the problem. Yet so many still fall for it.
It just make me all the more disgusted when I hear these GOP'ers, (Greed Over People), cry and apoligize to corporations, (big oil, asbestos plants, etc), for the misery they cause in the name of profits all over the planet.
It's ok to make a profit. Not ok to do so thru the misery of others. Republicans just consider that Capitalism. I believe it's evil.
How is it not on topic? Drawing comparisons between Bangladesh and WHAT'S ALREADY HAPPENING HERE? Ask the people of West Virginia about the quality of their well water due to Big Coal using their rivers and streams for their "slurries".
this apparently had nothing to do with the gop or corporations. the do - gooders caused the problem according to the article. try reading it works, but you also should study comprehension.
The ground water in that country has arsenic-mother nature put it there not man.
Do- gooders and the GOP did not cause the problem. Ignorance and poverty did.
As for pollution, there is natural (created by the chemicals in nature) and there is man made. People, ignorance and poverty are the biggest problem. Mexico south of the border dumps raw sewage into the ocean and so does China-these nations are huge polluters.
As for the Gulf of Mexico mess the government MANDATED the drilling for oil at that DEPTH WITHOUT THE COMPANY OR THE GOVERNMENT ITSELF HAVING THE TECHNOLOGY TO STOP THE DISASTER THAT IS HAPPENING NOW. Our government, both Dem's and Republicans failed in the fact they OK-ed drilling at a unsafe depth.
You do realize that arsenic is used in gold mining right? Try doing a Google search. Aresenic +gold mining. Real easy. Then try Gold Mining + Bangladesh.
Yes, you are Lame. Arsenic is naturally occurring in the Earth's crust. ANY form of mining or disturbing of the Earth's crust can bring it to the surface. Arsenic is NOT "used" in gold mining. It is found in the waste rock around almost any mine .
Water wells and the soil around them should be tested before being dug or used for drinking water. The real problem in Bangladesh is the poverty level and the complacency and corrruption of the government there. The government of Bangladesh does not care about their people or their environment.
This story has absolutely Nothing to do with our government or either Party here. It is a completely separate story from the Gulf Spill.
Why should we take on another basket case of a country? "Some argue that the international community must help fix the problem created by the wells they first dug" First you pay for the wells to be dug and then some folks "suggest" that you pay to fix a problem that you created to help these poor people. We have enough folks in America that need clean water and we should tend to them first. I'm really tired of these aid folks and their whining!
On this planet, we are all in this together. Everyone whose water is being fouled or poisoned -- for whatever reason, natural or corporate greed -- needs that water to be cleaned up, or some other solution found; most especially for those who are unable to do it for themselves. We have a moral responsibility to help the poorest of the poor. All our religions teach us this. Yes, we have our own problems in this country, but what happens to my neighbor, happens to me.
Allen,
Wow, don't you make us all proud to be American. Europe and the USA have worked south Asia for everything we can over the last one Hundred years or so, maybe building a couple thousand cement cisterns or some real wells would be the RIGHT thing to do.
Well said, Violet's Mom. Let's hear it for doing the right thing by all of us!
This will be us in 6 years if we keep on following republican ideology and economic strategy.
Our soil will spontaneously produce huge amounts of Arsenic? Wow, Republicans are MAGIC!
Heavy metals from coal mining, burning, etc ...
There are plenty of documentaries on Big Coal and their republican friends in WV. Watch one.
They use rivers and streams to send their coal "slurry" down to the plant for processing. The people can't use their own wells because heavy metals (lead) and arsenic seep into the groundwater.
Ok, let's all get it straight. Arsenic is a naturally occurring element. It's in the ground. This is not a grand conspiracy by a greedy corporation. Liberal, another definition for dumb.
not as naturally occuring as stupidity. (not you)
However avoiding it by drilling into deeper aquifers when we have the ability to do so might be the decent thing to do.
I live in washington county, city of St george utah. we just got our water report...it shows the arsenic level in the water exceeds standards. the water company got a slap on the wrist.. i just want to know how to filter this arsenic out. and why the company didnt tell us howl
http://www.thewaterexchange.net/arsenic-water-filters.htm
It's not on topic because it has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO with the GOP or Corporations. If you'd read the story, instead of just jumping in to post something clueless, you'd see that the problem was caused by naturally occurring Arsenic in the soil. International Aid was given to the country, then used to dig shallow wells in Arsenic-laced soil. So please, Genius, tell us how that has anything to do with the GOP or Corporations.
It's not on topic because it has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO with the GOP or Corporations. If you'd read the story, instead of just jumping in to post something clueless, you'd see that the problem was caused by naturally occurring Arsenic in the soil. International Aid was given to the country, then used to dig shallow wells in Arsenic-laced soil. So please, Genius, tell us how that has anything to do with the GOP or Corporations.
Sorry for the repeats, the page just decided to post the same thing multiple times.
i dont need my ego stroked but thank you anyway
We should pass a law against drinking water. It is just too dangerous,think of the children!
It can't too bad for them. There are 150+ million of them, and their numbers are growing. Poverty is self imposed, these people live in a hell of their own creation.
Your ignorance is appalling. Have you traveled in countries such as Bangladesh? I have and I can honestly say poverty is not self imposed there or anywhere else as opposed to ignorance such as yours. That, without any doubt is self imposed as the means of furthering your educations is within your hands yet clearly ignored.
Lee, you're a moron and a self-centered A-hole. These people did not choose poverty. No-one does. You must have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth and never had to work for anything. Guess you didn't need to get an education either. You're parents must be so proud.
No Soul, No Blame. The story beggars belief. In the 1970s, international agencies headed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) began pumping millions of dollars of aid money into Bangladesh for tubewells to provide “clean” drinking water. According to the World Health Organization, the direct result has been the biggest outbreak of mass poisoning in history. Up to half the country’s tubewells, now estimated to number 10 million, are poisoned. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands will die.
Why? Because nobody tested for the natural poison, arsenic, widely found in underground water. And when a doctor did find traces of the metal, and when Bangladeshi villagers did start turning up at doctors’ surgeries with the tumours and telltale signs of arsenic poisoning, the results were swiftly buried so that nobody made the connection.
Even now as the scale of the calamity emerges, nobody is admitting culpability. Not UNICEF, which initiated the tubewells programme and paid for the first 900,000 wells, nor the World Bank, a fellow sponsor. Not the Bangladeshi government, or the foreign engineers and public health scientists who did not think to test the water for so long.
The same agencies that played godmother to the catastrophe are now wringing their hands and saying it will likely take 30 years to find all the poisoned tubewells–longer than it took to sink them all. So why are the authorities and international experts proving incapable of coming up with a solution?
The roots of the problem go back to the early 1970s when most Bangladeshis living in the countryside relied on surface ponds and rivers for their drinking water. Sewage bacteria, however, unleashed a battery of water-borne disease which killed a quarter of a million children each year, according to the World Bank. So UNICEF sought to solve the problem by instigating a massive tubewell project to tap into underground water sources, despite warnings by some local people that they were pumping the “devil’s water.”
UNICEF explains today that “at the time, standard procedures for testing the safety of groundwater did not include tests for arsenic [which] had never before been found in the kind of geological formations that exist in Bangladesh.” But many geochemists, such as John McArthur at University College London, scoff at such a suggestion. They blame dogma among public health people with no knowledge of geology, and who equated underground water with safe water.
Who knew what and when? The Bangladeshi government claims that cases of arsenic contamination came to its attention in 1993 and concluded two years later that the poisoning was widespread, with tubewell water the likely cause. But according to Quazi Quamruzzaman of the Dhaka Community Hospital, the government was told as early as 1985 that Bangladeshis crossing the border into West Bengal were being diagnosed with arsenic poisoning. Arsenic is a slow killer. The most obvious signs are the blisters found on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, which can eventually turn gangrenous and cancerous. Meanwhile, the poison also attacks internal organs, notably the lungs and kidneys, which can result in a battery of illnesses including cancers. Despite the mounting evidence of contamination, there were no investigations.
The World Bank also maintains that “before 1993, groundwater was never tested for arsenic,” according to Babar Kabir, hydrogeologist and head of the organization’s water department. But Peter Ravenscroft, an engineer based in Dhaka for the British engineering consultancy firm Mott MacDonald, who worked extensively for international aid agencies on the tubewell programme, says he first found arsenic in groundwaters in the late 1980s and published his findings in 1990.
Yet it wasn’t until 1998 that the international community finally appeared to accept some responsibility for solving the mass poisoning of Bangladesh. The World Bank announced an emergency three-year programme to identify the killer tubewells using simple tests and to “put in motion concrete actions [to] combat a major health crisis with devastating effects on the lives of millions.” With almost every one of the country’s 68,000 villages potentially at risk, the Bank said it would initially survey 4,000 villages and draw up action plans for each. This “fast-track project” was to be the first phase in a 15-year programme to screen the country’s tubewells.
But the “fast-track” programme took another year to negotiate between the international agencies and the Bangladeshi government, pushing its completion date to late 2002. And inquiries by the UNESCO Courier have revealed that the programme remains mired. Richard Wilson, a leading analyst of the crisis from Harvard University’s department of public health, says “the project is stalled.” He blames the Bangladeshi government’s failure to “decide how to spend the money” and says that leading officers at the Bank are privately “most upset about it.”
thank you Mr. Jones.. its almost funny how you have to always sort through 30 moronic replies of people slinging their monkey poop at others to finally find a sensible mind. I was wondering where and how the Arsenic occurs.. sadly it does seem like a 'natural' poisoning but we also forget the reason why this country is so impoverished is because of all the mass flooding that has occurred there over the century. If I may recall there was a time more than half the country was under-water which is almost ironic to their overall situation. I am wondering if this flooding causes all the general pollution and toxins on the surface to be filtered out in the soil.. which might create high deposits of arsenic.. although we are not allowed to speculate until we drink the 'devil's water' and see for ourselves, those things we take for granted.
this article is written like the crickets fiddle but it also reminds me of this American classic short story called 'A Rose for Emily', i think by William Faulkner. in this story the main character goes out to buy arsenic, which was most likely used for rat poison in those days, to further the acts of the devil.
arsenic can also be found in small quantities very near yourself.. such as in the LCD of cell-phones and etc. the ultimate solution is, we must simply evolve from our toxic being and learn nature, not science, is always shining a light upon us. although the addiction of darkness will always prevail, we must never blame it on anyone other than our very selves.
you self-righteous people who make me sick, I hope once your very blink of an existence is over.. that you will be equally proud of being dead.. not making enemies anymore.
the brother of love is fear of chaos.
Ziro Japan
I hope this doesn't give the Israeli Government any more ideas on additives to the drinking water it pumps to Gaza and the West Bank residents!
As an environmental chemist and former support scientist for Arsenic treatment studies in groundwater, I would like to add that there are few affordable, effective treatment strategies for Arsenic suitable for developing countries. Anion-exchange, reverse osmosis, iron oxide filters and alumina are too costly and high maintenance for 1 million wells. Arsenic exists in two oxidation states, only one of which causes cancer. Arsenic 3 is very difficult to remove, and must be oxidized to Arsenic 5 for removal. Oxidants like chlorine cost money.
Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffet and other visionary billionaires need to immediately fund a research program to produce large numbers of solar powered units which, using a pinch of salt, can create chlorine for the oxidation of Arsenic, and which contain a zeolite or exhange media, which can be recharged and refreshed multiple times. This may be the only technology that can save these unfortunate victims of misguided development policy. And yes, rich nations need to step up and take the lead in fixing this problem. I don't mind being taxed for this kind of human interest mission -- just the sort of thing a great nation like ours should aspire to.
good assestment of the facts. recommend for reading.
Arsenic occurs naturally in my county in Michigan, and many of us here are using our own wells. It's in our house's well water in amounts too small to be quantified, it just showed up in one sample out of many as a "trace". We do not drink or cook with our water anyway, even though the county claims that it is drinkable. Odds of getting municipal water anytime soon are probably nil, there is no money for anything like that. I will stick to the bottled water even if we did get a municipal water source, I can't stand the chlorine/swimming pool taste of "city water".
Ironically, our first house was only two miles away from our current home, also had a well, but it was so shallow that arsenic was not an issue. That well was only 21 feet deep, had the best water I've ever tasted, no iron in it, either. You could have bottled that stuff and sold it.
Municipal water is killing people slowly. No telling how longer one can live if not for the polluted water from the city. The city only uses multi-media sand type filers to remove the large particles, cartridge filters to remove the smaller suspended particles and carbon filter to improve the taste. But little of the dissolved particles and ionized particles are removed. So, your tap water may look clear and taste fine, the particles which are too tiny to be filtered by conventional methods are pumped to your house. These particles include agricultural runoff, street rain runoff and industrial effluent into the rivers and lakes.
The government (FDA) won't tell you this because it would cause a panic. There are ways to clean up the water but it is very costly, so your ever-caring government is keeping you in the dark.
This is a sad tale of the fallibility of technological fixes for extending the carrying capacity of an area. There are serious parallels between drilling wells in Bangladesh and the BP disaster. Deep drilling is a technological fix for peak oil. The Bangladeshis didn't have enough water. We didn't have enough oil. Our engineers came up with a fix... Drill Baby Drill!
Is any of this starting to sound familiar? Now in both cases we have ecological and humanitarian disasters. And as long as we're on the subject of techno fixes, how about those sand bars they are dropping off the coast of Louisiana? Experts say they will do more damage than good. But we're building them anyway.
I guess my point is that when you come up with a technological fix for an over-consumption problem, there will be consequences. And as anyone whose breakwater destroyed their beach will tell you, not all of them are good.
Well said Aurum.
(gop) greed over people i like it and how true it is. i know what we can do. lets start another war over their drinking water.
"...killing one in five..." and "...linked to one in five deaths among those exposed..." seem to me to be far from the same thing by two degrees. The headline of this story is either sensationalist or at best ill composed.
But, interesting to know that, at least, data is collected on water contaminant mortality. If they only had the money to pay for proper testing and filtration.
And of course all that is quite easy for me to say while drinking bottled water, sitting in a comfy chair in 75degF conditioned air. So, it could be much worse all around. Don't worry. Be happy.
They dont call it the "Third World" for nuthin. Lest we here in the "First World" get too smug, there are over 80k chemicals loose in our own environment that are having God only knows what effect on us.
When I read this story I could only think about all those TV and magazine advertisements asking for financial support....$1 per day saves many....now we see how non-informed scientifically castrated individuals (do-gooders) who not only take our hard earn dollars but also how they screw up by not doing the right thing. Sally Struthers and other non-informed television/movies stars need to think twice about what they commit to and should be better advocates for their own reputations. This is neither a politically right or left issue...it is in fact pseudo charities taking advantage of US citizens and most importantly jeopardizing the long term health of third world nations like Bangledesh.
Poisonous, toxic and carcingenic crude Oil in the water tables and water supplys has been referred to as 'Texas Tea' compliments of the Republican politicans special interests in Big Oil.
If the Republican politicans in State and Federal offices had their way, they would and have actively strived to entirely strip and gut EPA inspectors and Federally mandated Clean Water legislation.
Perhaps some here remember how obstructionist the entire Republican party was against the original federal clean water laws. They don't care about people's drinking water, just the fast money they can make from outsourcing America's family wage jobs!
How is pollution a Republican thing? For decades, Louisiana had been run by Democrats. It is one of the most polluted states in the country. Democrats talk the talk, but seldom walk the walk. As someone who has traveled the country cleaming up past pollution sites, most have been due to Democrat running the show. During the period when I was involved in all the cleanup, Republicans were in controlled.
BTW, if you think your current tap water is safe because the FDA and politicians say so, you are dreaming. I can tell you a few things about tap water that will make you sick.
That old nasty Big Oil. Giving millions upon millions of dollars to Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy and Conservation International. How are those Big Oil, Greed Over People Republicans going to explain BP giving money to liberals? How are those liberals going to explain that their acceptance of BP money is really some sinister Conservative Republican plot? Those nasty nature loving special interests!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052302164.html
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/06/bp-greenpeace-big-oil-jackpot.html
Why would the author say that half of the population has guzzled tainted groundwater? That's a odd choice of verb?
When disaster strikes, pray it's a fast one. God keep us from a slow disaster; no one will want to believe it's happening.
You mean something like anthropogenic global warming?