Was British Group Negligent in Testing of Bangladesh Wells?
As part of a UNICEF program designed to create over a million wells for poor people in Bangladesh, Great Britain’s National Environment Research Council’s British Geological Survey was brought to Bangladesh to test the potability of water. The BGS tested the water and certified it was clean and safe for drinking. Unfortunately, they never tested the water for arsenic.
Over the next few years, people in the area began reporting skin diseases which are similar to arsenic poisoning. The BGS was called back in to test the water in 1998 and found high levels of arsenic in the water.
Now two British law firms are suing the NERC and the BGS arguing that it was negligent for not testing for arsenic in 1992.
The geologists argue, however, that at the time there was no good reason to test for arsenic. As the BGS put it in a press release on the lawsuit,
Arsenic only occurs in a water-soluble form in certain hydrogeological conditions. It is one of a large number of trace elements which are therefore not routinely tested for in groundwaters unless there is independent evidence to suggest its presence.
Since the area in Bangladesh did not meet those hydrological conditions, arsenic was not tested for. Several years later, however, researchers began to realize that arsenic could occur in the sort of aquifers present in Bangladesh.
The lawsuit against the BGS argues that since arsenic was found in groundwater in nearby West Bengal, that common sense dictates that the water in Bangladesh should have been tested for arsenic as well.
Sources:
Bangladeshis sue British geologists for ‘largest mass poisoning ever’. Andy Coghlant, New Scientist, Sept. 7, 2002.
Article on Arsenic Poisoning in Bangladesh. Martyn Day and Bozena Michalowska, April 2002.
Bangladesh claims against the British Geological Survey.
The Was British Group Negligent in Testing of Bangladesh Wells? by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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