Skip to navigation | Skip to content  Mass arsenic poisoning
mystery solved  Bangladesh water  Many people in Bangladesh
continue to drink arsenic contaminated water (Source: USGS)
Researchers have finally worked out what led to the widespread
release of arsenic into drinking water in rural Bangladesh,
affecting millions of people.  Dubbed 'the worst mass poisoning
in history', the incident has puzzled scientists for decades.
Now a team publishing in Nature Geoscience say that tens of
thousands of man-made ponds are to blame.  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.  An estimated two million people in Bangladesh have been
poisoned by arsenic in water drawn from millions of low-tech
"tube wells" scattered across the country.  Ironically, the
wells were dug with the help of international aid agencies to
protect villages from unclean and disease-ridden surface water.
Poisoning symptoms include violent s