HR: 17:10h
AN: PA24A-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Arsenic in Bangladesh Groundwater: from Science to Mitigation
AU: * van Geen, A
EM: avangeen@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AU: Ahmed, K M
EM: kmahmed@udhaka.net
AF: Geology Department, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000 Bangladesh
AU: Graziano, J H
EM: jg24@columbia.edu
AF: Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032 United States
AB: A large proportion of the populations of Bangladesh and other South Asian countries is at risk of contracting cancers and other debilitating diseases due to exposure to high concentrations of naturally occurring arsenic in groundwater supplied by millions of tube wells. Starting in January 2000, and in partnership with several Bangladeshi institutions, an interdisciplinary team of health, earth, and social scientists from Columbia University has focused its efforts to address this crisis on a 25 km2 region in Araihazar upazila, about 20 km northeast of Dhaka. The project started with the recording of the position and depth of ~6600 wells in the area, the collection of groundwater samples from these wells, and laboratory analyses for arsenic and a suite of other constituents. This was followed by the recruitment of 12,000 adult inhabitants of the area for a long-term cohort study of the effects of arsenic exposure, as well as cross-sectional studies of their children. This presentation will focus on (1) the extreme degree of spatial variability of arsenic concentrations in Bangladesh groundwater, (2) the notion that spatial variability hampers mitigation in the sense that it complicates predictions but also offers an opportunity for mitigation because many households live within walking or drilling distance of safe water, and (3) the implication of recent advances in our understanding of the mechanisms of arsenic mobilization for potential temporal changes in groundwater arsenic. In addition, (4) a unique data set documenting the response of 6500 households to 4 years of mitigation in Araihazar, supported by documented reductions in exposure to arsenic based on urine analyses, will be presented. The presentation will conclude with (5) a proposal for scaling up mitigation efforts to the rest of the country by targeting safe aquifers with information transmitted to the village level from a central data base using cellular phones.
UR: http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/news/2003/story07-18-03.html
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
DE: 1831 Groundwater quality
DE: 1045 Low-temperature geochemistry
SC: Public Affairs [PA]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting