Chemists Without Borders'  new approach to educating the public in Bangladesh about the dangers of arsenic: Teach it in high school.

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Scope and Background

Arsenic poisoning in drinking water in Bangladesh has already been identified as one of the world’s greatest humanitarian disasters. Out of 150 million people of Bangladesh, 35-77 million people are at risk from arsenic contamination of water. It is estimated that between 1-5 million children are at risk of death by arsenicosis by 2030.[1] ...

Photos of Arsenicosis Patients

Above photos courtesy of Project Well (http://projectwellusa.org/)

...The conceptual plan of this project is as follows:

College graduate interns visit high schools and give a presentation on the health hazards of arsenic in drinking water.  The interns also train the high school students how to measure the arsenic concentration at various wells in their community, leave a measurement kit with them and follow up in the following weeks to collect the data from the students.  For communities that have a high arsenic concentration in their water, the interns try to connect them with organizations that can help the communities transition to safe water.  MORE

[1] http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/90/11/11-101253/en/index.html

What has been accomplished so far

...Despite the many difficulties encountered, the interns achieved some remarkable results:

  1. Interest on the part of students and teachers was very high with attendance between 50 and 150 students at each high school. The meetings showed that there is a great desire for more information about the arsenic problem.

  2. It was easy to get students to volunteer to make the arsenic measurements at wells in their communities.

  3. Wells at three of the six schools showed arsenic levels above the official limit for Bangladesh (50 ppb), namely 100 ppb at Kumira Residential Girls High School and College and 250 ppb at Sitakunda Government High School and Teiail Multilateral High School.

  4. Officials at all the schools that had high arsenic levels expressed an interest in help in transitioning to a safe water supply.

  5. These results were achieved with a modest expenditure of about $6500 dollars which covered stipends for the interns and their expenses for communication and travel.  MORE

Reports, photos and videos from the schools visited

School #1 Chittagomg Govt. Girls' High School 

.....The students were so enthusiastic and interested during our presentation and training session. They asked many question about arsenic contamination and safe drinking water resources. We got 11 volunteered....MORE

....there were around 120 students.....The students were very engaged when we were presenting. They asked many questions about diseases and symptoms due to arsenic poisoning. They were also interested to know what should be done if there is high amount of arsenic in the drinking water...... The headmaster of the school repeatedly mentioned the need of testing students’ drinking water and requested us to help out if any arsenic found... MORE

....There were 90 students who are from class nine and two teachers in our presentation. There were around 30 volunteers who want to test the water from their community water sources....MORE

....The presentation and the demo took around 3 hours since there were almost 150 students from class 7 to 9. Before starting the presentation we asked the student what they know about arsenic, someone answered it a virus and someone said it is water born diseases. Later we clarify and discuss about the problem.....For the demo we use the water from school filter and unfortunately we got around 250 ppb arsenic. We and the students were very shocked;---MORE

...The classroom was big and we had around 81 students. As the students were very attentive and quiet, we did not have any difficulties during presentation....

The students were so enthusiastic and interested during our presentation and training session. We tested two of the wells that schools have. Unfortunately the arsenic level was 250 ppb in both wells. All of the students drink that water, so the students were very shocked. We got more than 45 volunteers....MORE

...The presentation and the demo took around 1 hour and there were almost 50 students from class 9....

There were around 30 volunteers who want to test the water from their community water sources. For the demo we use the water from school tube well and no arsenic was found at all. One of the teachers told us they found high arsenic in that tube well earlier so they replaced it with deep tube well and now there is no arsenic....MORE

What is next?

1. Two of the interns, Anowara Begum and Monira Sultana, went to Dhaka on November 30 to meet with Meera Smith of Project Well and members of the staff of Dhaka Community Hospital.  Ano and Monira reported on the results of this project and discussed how Project Well and DCH could provide the expertise to help the communities visited in this project transition to safe water.

2. We plan to continue this project starting Jan. 5, 2015 for another 16 weeks to visit a larger number of high schools and make progress on helping the affected communities in solving their arsenic problem.

3. We plan to focus during the second stage of this project on establishing partnerships with larger organizations working on water issues in Bangladesh and using our model of high school visitations, education and training to make the larger organizations' programs more effective.

4. Ultimately, we hope to justify scaling this operating model of using graduate interns and high school students to educate, test and mitigate the arsenic problem and other water and health problems nationwide throughout Bangladesh.

You can help us be contributing through Chemists Without Borders'  Donation Page with the link below.  Don't let Bangladesh's children be arsenic's next victims.  

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