Bill Bainbridge reports that the research results, published in the journal Nature, show that a clean aquifer can become contaminated when water suppliers pump groundwater that contains naturally high levels of the deadly poison, arsenic. And while the decade-long study concentrated on Van Phuc, a small village on the outskirts of Hanoi, it has implications for the entire region.
Study co-auther Pham Hung Viet of the Hanoi University of Science says arsenic contamination is elevated because people are using arsenic-laden water for their daily cooking and drinking needs. The phenomena observed in Van Phuc village can be considered as a typical natural phenomena of arsenic contamination in the whole of the Red River Delta, he said.
The World Health Organisation guidelines for arsenic in drinking water are 10 micrograms per liter. Concentrations in Van Phuc have been found to be 10 to 300 times higher than that. Michael Berg, an environmental scientist currently visiting Curtin University in Western Australia, says arsenic contamination is a very slow disease that is difficult to diagnose. Even in low concentrations, arsenic poisoning over a long period of time causes cancers of the skin, lungs, bladder and kidneys. The most visible symptoms are disfiguring skin lesions.
Arsenic poisoning emerged as a public health crisis in India and Bangladesh in the 1990s. Samples of the groundwater taken from wells installed for drinking water by well-meaning NGOs have identified the problem and were inadvertently providing contaminated groundwater to large sections of the population.
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