Man-made ponds linked to arsenic in Bangladesh water
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Man-made ponds and rice fields irrigated using groundwater may be responsible for arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh, a study has found.
Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical poisonous to humans and is known to cause skin lesions and cancers of the bladder, kidney, lung and skin. While it is known that organic carbon triggers the release of arsenic from sediments into groundwater, the source of this carbon has been unclear. In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, researchers said they used chemical tests and models to examine the flow of groundwater in a typical agricultural area in Bangladesh and found that man-made ponds were a key source of organic carbon. “The chemical signature of high-arsenic groundwater points toward ponds as the source of the contaminated water,” wrote the scientists, led by Charles Harvey from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. They warned against the building of artificial ponds above existing tube wells. … Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh suffer from skin lesions and experts have warned for years that Bangladesh can expect more cases of cancer if its people continue drinking arsenic-contaminated water from millions of small tube wells spread across the countryside. … According to the World Health Organization, arsenic contaminated water directly affects the health of 35 million people in Bangladesh, which has a total population of 130 million. …
