COMMUNITIES across Bangladesh are drinking poisoned water from wells that they have been assured are safe, because of flaws in an international effort to screen water for arsenic contamination.
An estimated 35 million Bangladeshis regularly drink water from tube wells contaminated by arsenic from underground sediments. Tens of thousands are already suffering cancers and other symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Within a decade, one-tenth of the deaths in much of the south of the country could be caused by arsenic, according to forecasts by the World Health Organization (WHO).
UNICEF and other international agencies sank millions of tube wells across…
