Arsenic contamination in groundwaters in Bangladesh and options of sustainable drinking water supplies

P. BHATTACHARYA; J. BUNDSCHUH; M. VON BRÖMSSEN; M. HOSSAIN; K.M. AHMED; J. HOINKIS; M.I. LITTER

The Global Arsenic Problem: challenges for safe water production

CRC Press/Balkema, Taylor & Francis Group

Año: 2010; p. 21 - 35

Groundwater sources used for drinking in many parts of the world contain geogenic arsenic(as) with levels of concentrations above the drinking water guideline value of the Worldhealth organisation (Who, 10 µg l−1). occurrence of arsenic in groundwater has beenknown a century ago from argentina, where the toxic effects on public health were describedalready in the year 1917. however, it was not before half a century later, that the as problemachieved world interest. This was the consequence of a unicef program to provide therural population of bangladesh with microbe-free drinking water by changing the drinkingwater resource from surface- and rainwater to groundwater exploited from shallow aquifers.however, the quality of the groundwater was not tested for as and caused, after 10 years ofexposure of large parts of the population, toxicological effects. This became the beginningof extended international aid efforts to mitigate the as problem in bangladesh and adjacentWest-bengal, india, where many treatment methods have been developed and tested, andbrought the groundwater as topic to wide scientific and public interest.since several decades, the contamination of groundwater and to less extent of surface waterby geogenic as is well known from countries such as mexico, chile, Peru, Taiwan and somesmall regions in european countries such as hungary. until recently, it was thought that theproblem is limited to these countries. however, there were many new discoveries all over theworld such as in several regions of the People’s republic of china (1993–1996), nicaragua(1996), chhattisgarh, india (1999), nepal (2000), bolivia (2001), Thailand (2001), Vietnam(2001), australia (2001); bihar, india (2002), uttar Pradesh, india (2003), Jharkhand,india (2004), assam, india (2004), myanmar (2004), cambodia (2004), Pakistan (2005),el salvador (2005), ecuador (2005), honduras (2006), baja california state, mexico (2006),lao People’s democratic republic (2006), cambodia (2007), manipur, india (2007), andmore recently in sumatra, indonesia (2009) and izmir province, Turkey (2009) (fig. 1.1 inchapter 1 of this book).