ABSTRACT
The World Bank’s local chief stated that tens of millions of people are at risk from health effects, and that 43,000 of the 68,000 villages are presently at risk or could be at risk in future. According to the prediction of WHO, within a few years, death across much of southern Bangladesh (1 in 10 adults) could be from cancers triggered by arsenic.[3] The area and population of Bangladesh are 148,393 km2 and 120 million, respectively. Thirty-four thousand hand tubewell water samples from 64 districts in Bangladesh have been analyzed and 56% contained arsenic above 10 mg/L, that the WHO recommended level of arsenic in drinking water with 37% contained more than 50 mg/L, the WHO maximum permissible limit. Maximum concentration of arsenic
found in groundwater of Bangladesh was 4730 mg/L. Overall result shows only 25% and 37% of hand tubewells contain arsenic above 50mg/L in arsenic-affected areas of West Bengal and Bangladesh, respectively, but there are many villages in West Bengal and Bangladesh where 80-90% of hand tubewells contain arsenic above 50 mg/L. It has been estimated that at the present time, more than 25 million people in Bangladesh are drinking arsenic-contaminated water above 50 mg/L, and 51 million people are drinking water above 10 mg/L. Analyses of more than 9900 biological samples from arsenic-affected villages of Bangladesh indicate that 95% of samples contain arsenic above normal level. So far in a preliminary survey, over 10,000 people have been identified with arsenical skin lesions from 222 out of 253 villages surveyed for patients. Fig. 5 shows an arsenic patient with squamous cell carcinoma.
