Arsenic and contamination of drinking-water in Bangladesh: a public-health perspective.

The article by Mitra and colleagues in this issue of the Journal presents an interesting scenario on arsenic contamination from Bangladesh (1). The paper further confirms the health effects of arsenic and contributes to the literature, especially regarding the inverse relationship between body mass index and the duration of disease. Many tubewells in Bangladesh have been contaminated with arsenic that exceeds both the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 10 μg/L and the Bangladesh permissible limit of 50 μg/L. This arsenic calamity of well-water in Bangladesh can be described as the largest known mass poisoning in history, with more than 29 million people exposed through their drinkingwater (2-5). Numerous other occurrences of arsenic have been reported worldwide. Some countries, such as Taiwan, Chile, and Argentina, have been recognized for several decades, while others, e.g. Nepal and Vietnam, have been recognized more recently (Table 1).