A few of Bangladesh's contamination issues

Jonathan Tejeda                                                                           Bangladesh Water Contamination

02/16/16

Overview

Bangladesh has had a history of poor water quality, and management. Latrine usage is minuscule with only about 16% of the rural areas having access to it. The death rate due to water contamination has killed over 100,000 children in the past year alone. The distribution of clean, and ample water has been a priority to the Bangladesh government since the late 70s, when a project to lessen the dependency on contaminated surface water took place. This included constructing over 10 million wells. Later new problems arose such as high arsenic concentration contaminating the well-water leaving many without clean water. This has caused many of those who depended on the well water to source back to unprotected, often contaminated ponds, ditches, etc. These unsafe methods have led to greater outbreaks of water related diseases. Aside from the rural water crisis, overpopulation, and lack of sanitation has created a similar issue in Bangladesh's urban environment. Many of those who once lived in the rural area of Bangladesh have migrated to the slums in hope of earning higher wages to support their families. Instead of solving the problem by moving out of areas with little to no clean water, overcrowding, poor housing, poverty, and poor methods of disposing of waste, have all contributed to the water contamination crisis in Bangladesh.

Arsenic Water Contamination

Arsenic contamination is an ongoing epidemic in Bangladesh that has been described as 50x worse than the Chernobyl disaster, and is affecting up to half of the 150 million people that currently live in Bangladesh. This arsenic breakout begun when wells were dug up in efforts to provide clean drinking water to those who did not have access to it. Some 10 million wells were dug up, and tapped into arsenic deposits in ground, releasing the tasteless toxin into the water supply. Bangladesh which is one of the poorest nations in the world, with about half the population  earning a meager wage of 1 USD per day. This is largely why many argue that it's up to international parties to solve this issue of water contamination epidemic. Bangladesh is about half the size of Iowa, but manages to squeeze half the U.S. population. With that in mind, the United Nations in conjunction with Bangladesh government has proposed a plan to provide safe drinking water to all in 2011, but even with that, estimates say that at least 20 million people with still be exposed to arsenic laced water. The solution the the problem could be as simple as digging pass the arsenic contaminated levels, but even that is past the affordable level for most people living in Bangladesh. Another explored option was to start introducing filter, in the wells. Once again this is out of reach to one of the poorest populations in the world.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37958050/ns/health-health_care/t/arsenic-water-killing-bangladesh/#.VsNbI_lVhBc

http://water.org/country/bangladesh/