By Frances Williams in Geneva Published: September 13 2000 18:05GMT | Last Updated: September 13 2000 23:38GMT More than half the population of Bangladesh may be at risk of chronic arsenic poisoning from contaminated drinking water, in what health experts are describing as "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history". Allan Smith, epidemiology professor at Berkeley, University of California, says between 35m and 77m of Bangladesh's 125m people are exposed to naturally occurring arsenic in water supplies, which will eventually provoke an epidemic of cancers and other fatal diseases. Writing in the September bulletin of the World Health Organisation, Prof Smith says the impoverished south Asian nation is grappling with an environmental disaster of unprecedented scale, surpassing the chemical accident at Bhopal, India, in 1984 and the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986. Studies in other countries where arsenic has been found in ground water, such as Argentina, Chile, China, India, Mexico, Taiwan, Thailand and the US, show that one in 10 people drinking contaminated water will die of cancer of the bladder, kidney, lung or skin. Long-term arsenic poisoning also causes neurological problems, heart and lung diseases and diabetes, as well as debilitating skin lesions that have already emerged in Bangladesh, affecting at least 100,000. Prof Smith says arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh should be declared a public health emergency, with immediate provision of arsenic-free water the priority. The catastrophe stems from the creation in the past 20 years of millions of small tube wells, many intended to give access to safe drinking water. At that time, however, arsenic contamination was not picked up by water-testing procedures. Arsenic-induced skin lesions were first identified in 1983 in West Bengal in India, where more than 1.5m people may have been exposed to contaminated water, with 200,000 cases of arsenic poisoning. _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
