Introduction to arsenic contamination and health risk assessment with special reference to Bangladesh

The problem of arsenic contamination in the Bengal River Basin illustrates a classic conundrum in environmental health, namely, that development projects can have double effects: on one hand development of tube wells eliminated bacterial pathogens and on the other it exposed the population to poisoning from arsenic. Thus, in future development projects the full health risk of a project must be considered during the planning, implementation, and decommissioning phases (Caussy 2003b; Caussy et al. 2003b). If such a holistic approach would have been followed, the mass contamination in the Bengal River Basin, in which millions of people were and are exposed to unsafe levels of arsenic, could have been averted. Although definite knowledge gaps in applying risk assessment steps for arsenic contamination exist, arsenic clearly poses a serious health problem and economic consequences to the affected population of the Bengal River Basin. It is binding on the international community to alleviate the problem through remediation measures to reduce arsenic exposure. One Environmental Sustainability Millennium development goal is to increase the proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source (Bartram et al. 2005). Providing water with safe levels of arsenic to affected communities of the Bengal River Basin will directly contribute to improved community health.