Building sustainable Arsenic-Safe Water Solutions in India
December 1, 2008
By Eileen Lambert, reprinted with permission from Water Conditioning and Purification Magazine
The mounting arsenic health crisis in India surfaced first during a preliminary survey in 1976, but it wasn’t until 1983, when a patient fell ill in the district of South 24-Parganas that the linkage between water supply, arsenic and illness was finally established. Years of illness across the state of West Bengal had preceded the diagnosis, but the causes of these illnesses were unknown and largely unresearched. Today, malignant hyperkeratosis lesions on the skin, liver illness and other organ deterioration are recognized as indicators of arsenic poisoning in the water. Sadly, the slow progress of contamination still leads people to think they are drinking safe water when the level of contamination is actually quite deadly.
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