Designing Sustainable Local Approaches to Lower Arsenic Exposure in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh over 50 million people are exposed to naturally occurring arsenic concentrations exceeding the WHO standard of 10 μg/L, even though arsenic safe water is often available within a short walking distance. Arsenic mitigation typically involves a person coming into a village to test the well water for arsenic. This person often leaves the village without providing the resources to address health concerns or advice on mitigation options.

We developed an arsenic education training program for local staff and conducted a longitudinal intervention study of 20 villages to investigate the impact of having local resident staff conduct water arsenic testing and to provide arsenic awareness education as well as mitigation options on arsenic exposure. A pre- and post-intervention questionnaire was administered to the person in each randomly selected household responsible for primary drinking water collection. The results of this study, conducted in 20 villages in Singair, Bangladesh, indicate that locally trained arsenic testers were able to encourage on average 58 percent of study households in their assigned villages with unsafe wells to switch to alternative drinking water sources. This is almost twice the amount of well switching rate observed in areas of Bangladesh that only received well water arsenic testing by outside testers in the World Bank sponsored Bangladesh Arsenic Mitigation Water Supply Project. This intervention approach provides a sustainable option for arsenic mitigation in Bangladesh that could be used by local government agencies to conduct future arsenic interventions.