ABDUL KASEN lifted a green leaf “bandage” to reveal a large growth on the
palm of his hand. The chances are that his cancer came from 20 years of drinking
water from a village well laced with arsenic. Five of his six children also have
skin blemishes and melanomas associated with the poison.
His well, in the village of Barai Kandi near Dhaka, the capital of
Bangladesh, is one of an estimated 2 million out of a total of 4 million in the
country that contain dangerous amounts of arsenic. On my Saturday morning visit
to the village with Akhtar…
