Criteria for Prioritizing Interventions to Reduce Arsenic Exposure from Drinking Well Water in Bangladesh
Abstract
Even though the well-water arsenic (As) problem in Bangladesh was recognized almost two decades ago, about 20 million people are still chronically exposed to drinking well water that does not meet the national standard of 50 μg/L As, and an additional 20 million are vulnerable if the World Health Organization guideline of 10 μg/L is considered. This presentation compares different criteria used to prioritize interventions in affected villages of Bangladesh based on a blanket survey of 49,000 wells serving 380,000 people of Araihazar upazila conducted in 2012-13. The survey relied primarily on the ITS Arsenic Econo-Quick kit, but a subset of samples were also analyzed in the laboratory for calibration. Using this information, the 300 villages of Araihazar were ranked in three different ways: (1) the proportion of wells with >50 ug/L As, which is the current practice in Bangladesh; (2) the proportion of wells with >10 ug/L As, which is advocated by some; and (3) cumulative exposure which is calculated by summing the As content of all the wells in a village. We argue that this last method is the best estimate of the potential reduction in exposure that could be achieved by village level interventions such as installation of one or several deep wells or setting up piped-water supply system by the government. The data show that if funds are available for intervening in only 100 of the 300 villages in Araihazar, for instance, the integrated impact will be 50% higher if the villages are prioritized on the basis of cumulative exposure instead of proportion of wells with As concentrations >50 ug/L. The outcome is more or less similar to that of 10 ug/L, if used as a threshold instead. These observations indicate that it might be more useful to use cumulative exposure as a way of prioritizing village-level interventions instead of arguing over the pros and cons of reducing the threshold from 50 to 10 ug/L.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGH21A..07J
- Keywords:
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- 0240 Public health;
- GEOHEALTH;
- 0240 Public health;
- GEOHEALTH;
- 1831 Groundwater quality;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1831 Groundwater quality;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY