Identifying the Hidden Costs of a Public Health Success: Arsenic Well Water Contamination and Productivity in Bangladesh

In the 1970s and 1980s, the government of Bangladesh, with the support and financing of the United Nations Children’s Fund, promoted the digging of tube wells to provide clean drinking water and reduce the incidence of diarrheal disease. This shift in water sources has been attributed to having played a major role in the reductions in morbidity experienced in Bangladesh, particularly with respect to water-born diseases. In the late 1990s, however, evidence indicated that groundwater was contaminated by naturally-occurring arsenic in 59 of the country’s 64 districts. The contamination of groundwater by arsenic in Bangladesh is the largest poisoning of a population in