Main Ideas
- . In the 1970s and 1980s the Bangladesh government, along with international aid agencies spearheaded by UNICEF, undertook an ambitious project to bring clean water to the nation’s villages.
- The solution was a tubewell: a simple, hardy, hand-operated pump that sucks water, through a pipe, from a shallow underground aquifer.
- A tubewell became a prized possession: it lessened the burden on women, who no longer had to trek long distances with their pots and pails; it reduced the dependence on better-off neighbors; and most important, it provided pathogen-free water to drink.
- Everybody neglected to check the water for arsenic.
- As early as 1983, dermatologist Kshitish C. Saha of the School of Tropical Medicine in neighboring Kolkata (Calcutta), India, had identified the skin lesions on some patients as arising from arsenic poisoning. He traced the mineral to water from tubewells.
- Today around 30 percent of Bangladesh’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.
- The World Health Organization’s upper limit, which is also the recently revised standard of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is 10 micrograms.
- Another concern is that Bangladeshis may be ingesting arsenic through a second route: the grain they eat two or three times a day.
- A few vegetables, in particular an edible tuber containing an astonishing 100 parts per million of arsenic, are also contaminated.
- Arsenic in drinking water thus constitutes the largest case of mass poisoning in history, dwarfing Chernobyl.
- Drinking water with high levels of arsenic can also lead to neurological and cardiovascular complications.
Author's Main Point |
There has been many studies in countries like Bangladesh where water is contaminated with the mineral arsenic. A grayish-white element having a metallic luster, vaporizing when heated and forming poisonous compounds. The people of Bangladesh are being poison by arsenic through the tubewells were they get their water is contaminated with arsenic. "These symptoms describe the first stage of arsenicosis, as arsenic-induced ailments are known. In the second stage, white spots appear mixed up with the black (leuco melanosis), legs swell, and the palms and soles crack and bleed (hyperkeratosis). These sores, which are highly characteristic of arsenic poisoning, are painful and can become infected; they make working and walking difficult. " Those are symptoms to arsenicosis. People in Bangladesh are dying from arsenic in their water but also arsenic is in rice. Developing countries such as Bangladesh must receive the help they need. They need clean water that is safe to drink. The government of Bangladesh with the help of organizations the villages of Bangladesh are getting aid.
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My Reflection |
People in India can not drink pure and safe water the problem is arsenic. The people in Bangladesh are suffering from arsenic poisoning, its in their tubewells were they fetched their daily water supply. Its very sad that those villagers do not have access to clean and safe water. Not is their water contaminated but their rice as well! There is an easy solution to this problem and that is education by educating how arsenic gets into their water tubewells. In the article I learn that some people are not very open mind but others are, so they tested their tubewells and discover that some of them were not safe because they have arsenic. The people that volunteer to test the tubewells now can educated others on how to test their water supply. So if people get educated on how to test their water for arsenic they will educated others as well. This will prevent the arsenic poisoning.
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