DEVIL'S WATER  (TRANSLATION)
Hells’s Water Floods the Ganges’s Delta
Translation of article published by Planeta Humano magazine, Spain, in March 2001. Original title: El agua del diablo - Las aguas del infierno inundan el delta del Ganges.
Text by Chelo Alvarez with photography by Roger Hutchings
© 2001 Chelo Alvarez

When UNICEF initiated “the green revolution” in the delta of the Ganges thirty years ago, deep wells were dug everywhere, presumably to eradicate epidemics.  No one could have anticipated, though, that hidden in the sacred river’s aquifers a lethal stowaway traveled from the Himalayas.

For millennia the Ganges has carried arsenic, but it is now poisoning the close to one hundred million inhabitants of the Gulf of Bengal.  It’s the largest mass poisoning in history.  As it stands, however, the majority of the Bengali population has no choice but to keep on drinking THE DEVIL’S WATER.

In the estuaries that surround the rubble of Sonargaon’s mansions, one hour from Dhaka, only white cranes and purple hyacinths add a touch of color to what used to be called “the Golden City.”  In Sonargaon, ancient capital of East Bengal and the seat of Indian power in the thirteenth century, there is no more gold.  However, today it is well known for its arsenic, one of the elements from which the alchemists sought to obtain the precious metal.

After crossing several flimsy bridges made of bamboo canes over a series of ponds and lagoons, we reach a hamlet waking up to the mullah’s prayer call.  On the way, we receive furtive looks from behind the yasmak, the veil that is part of the women’s black chador.  The village women spread their rice in the sun while the children pound it in mortars of hollowed tree trunks.  The shouts of some youngsters soon interrupt the imam’s melody.  “Go away! We don’t want visitors here! Take your cameras away!” yells Najirpur Rajumia, a twenty-year-old with spotted skin like the leopard of the Bengali jungle, who is barely able to continue his business training.  “Many snoop around but no one really helps!” he cries out.  An elder joins in, in what seems like an aggressive trance.  We are about to turn around when the reporter tells him: “If you go on shouting your words will be lost to the birds, but tell us your story and we may be able to help.”

The tragedy that Najirpur narrates began in West Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore’s homeland in neighboring India.  A man as slight as Tagore and, like him, a poet, was the first to sound the alarm.  Dipankar Chakraborti, who, among other things, uses poetry as a weapon, was born in Bangladesh when the country was Eastern Pakistan.  After receiving a degree in chemistry he lived in the West for sixteen years, working as a researcher in Switzerland, Spain and the U.S.

As we approach his office in the School of Environmental Studies (SOES) at the University of Jadavpur, in Calcutta, we are greeted by colorful birds of paradise and exuberant jungle plants painted on the walls.  Inside, we are haunted by countless photographs of patients showing the harrowing marks of poisoning by arsenic, also called arsenicism.  Among them, a sign reads: "Nothing is easy, if you do not want to do it, nothing is difficult, if you want to do it.  You have the power within you—you can do it."

When, in 1988, Chakraborti traveled from the U. S. to India, he saw for the first time numerous cases of peasants affected by a strange skin disease which they feared was leprosy. “That turned out to be the tip of an iceberg of colossal dimensions,” said Chakraborti in a recent interview.

Only years later was Chakraborti able to relate the skin deformities with the arsenic content in the drinking water.  By 1993, he had already devoted himself to the struggle against arsenic.  He started from scratch, investing all his savings.  He took hair and nail samples from people suffering from the disease as well as deep well water specimens, which he sent to labs in the West.  The results confirmed his suspicions.  The culprit: a high content of arsenic in the water from the deep wells that UNICEF and the government had drilled years before.

In 1994, he informed the Indian government of his findings but he was dismissed as an alarmist.  A year later, he contacted UNICEF in Bangladesh where he continued with his research in the different regions affected and drew the attention of the government agencies to the magnitude of the disaster.  UNICEF, along with the Muslim government of Bangladesh, showed the same indifference as the Indian government.  The Unicef representative in Dhaka declined to be interviewed.

In 1996, he compared his tests with those of Dr. Quazi Quamruzamman, aka Professor Zamman, a physician and chairman of the Dhaka Community Hospital in Dhaka.  “It was then that we realized the severity of the problem.”

Nevertheless, in 1998, UNICEF and the government of the Bengal Republic persisted in their recommendation that Chakraborti and Zamman include “no subversive material” in their reports on the arsenic subject.  They also demanded the names of foreign scientists invited to conferences on the subject “for official approval.”

According to Alan Smith, an expert on the arsenic crisis at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, “ between thirty-five and seventy-seven million inhabitants” of the Ganges delta are at risk of contracting arsenicism.  Many, probably thousands, are no longer alive to tell their tale; many others are definite victims of the effects of this gradual poisoning which produces malignant tumors not only on the skin but also in organs like the lungs, the liver, the bladder and the kidneys.  Since there are no statistics kept in Bangladesh and Muslim culture does not allow autopsies to be performed, it is almost impossible to translate the catastrophe into numbers.  “The scope of this problem is without precedent, as were the accidents in Bhopal (India) and Chernobyl (Ukraine),” says Chakraborti, “but the public opinion has turned a deaf ear.”

“We were forced to install pumps for deep wells.  It was imposed on us,” Zamman points out.  “The correct approach would be to ask who is accountable for the installation of those wells.  Not only do the donors fail to acknowledge their mistake and take responsibility in rectifying it, but many granting agencies are still digging wells as part of multimillion dollar projects, giving peasants a mere clay pot for a filter.”

It all started in the 1960s, when, under the auspices of the so-called “green revolution” for the Third World, UNICEF endeavored to eradicate hunger in the region by way of a water-supply project for irrigation during the dry season.  Water was extracted with treadle pumps from deep wells drilled throughout the Ganges delta, which spans West Bengal, India, and Bangladesh.  A country that suffers natural disasters like cyclones and monsoon floods every year, Bangladesh today produces sufficient rice and wheat for its own consumption.  However, although having the highest volume of surface water in the world, the nation cannot provide adequate drinking water to its people.

When Bangladesh became independent in 1971, the majority of the population was drinking the scarcely-filtered water from the estuaries’ lagoons—the public latrines—and close to one quarter of a million children died of water-related diseases.  Years later, the UNICEF project, intent on fighting against the diseases and deaths caused by numerous bacteria (E-coli, typhus, cholera, etc.), and with the cooperation of the government and NGOs, applied itself to providing clean drinking water.  To that end, deep wells were drilled and it was determined that the water drawn with hand pumps was suitable for consumption.

It was no easy task to convince the villagers to drink the water that gushed forth from the depths of the earth, which their ancestors called “the Devil’s water."  It took a massive educational campaign.  The NGOs combined efforts with UNICEF, donor countries and the government of Bangladesh, in convincing the peasants, household by household, that the deep-well water was clear and clean, not filthy like that of the lagoons, which 47% of the country still uses as latrines.  Indeed, the well water is crystal clear, but a deadly poison travels in it incognito.

“It has been an overwhelming lesson,” acknowledges Kushi Kabir with ADAB, an umbrella association for eleven thousand of the fifteen thousand NGOs officially registered which she directs.  “When we learned about the tragedy to which we had contributed, we felt deeply guilty,” she laments.  “We’ve lost the trust of the peasants.  How could we now turn around and ask them to stop drinking well water? We’ve had to do it but they don’t listen to us any longer.  And, to make matters worse, these people, who, for generations, had always dug wells themselves to make the water from the estuary safe for drinking, have now lost that ability, the younger generation no longer has the skills to do it.”

THE VICTIMS
Chakraborti insists that Shankar, one of his “shoinik” or soldiers (called that way because their consider their cause to be a 'war'), be our guide to the remote villages in West Bengal (India): “I want you to witness the worst cases."  On our way to Deganga, not far from the Bangladeshi border, we traverse rice paddies and lagoons crowned by bamboo guard huts (built there to prevent theft of the fish farmed there).  Many pools are strewn with purple hyacinths, grown for their bacteria-cleansing properties, explains Shankar. pointing at the white cranes which stand poised in the mangrove swamps.

We arrive in Kamdevkati, a village of a few huts and a handful of bright red water pumps.  A woman is rebuilding her hut.  “Some neighbors have loaned us a few bamboo branches,” says Komola Mondol.  “The summer rains washed it away."  Her home consists of a few canes holding a plastic sheet over an earthen floor.  The only light bulbs they have ever seen shine in a town several miles away.  An alum water filter of dubious efficacy and which arrived too late is their only possession.

Komola Mondol’s hands are so deformed, it’s no wonder her neighbors treat her as a leper.  Her palms are a cluster of warts.  When we shake her hand, as we’ve seen medical staff do to show everyone it’s not contagious, her eyes soften into a smile.  “The pain is the worst part.  I can’t even do the housework.  I’m in pain day and night."  Only rubbing mustard-seed oil or soaking in water seems to soothe the affected areas of the skin.  Although neighbors keep their distance, the children rush to show us the palms of their hands in expectation of our reassurance as to their health.  “No one buys my vegetables any more at the market, in Calcutta.  They run away when they see my hands, but I keep going every other day, I have to, for the sake of my daughter’s future."  Tears brighten up her dusky complexion.  The afternoon glow of the delta bathes her fine features, picking up the shimmer from a scar on her face.  “I had an ulcer in the nose removed at the hospital,” she clarifies.  Her husband approaches pulling a cart.  He is a beast of burden, making anywhere from 15 to 20 rupees a day, about fifty cents.  They can’t understand why he is not afflicted.  As Zamman would explain later, some members of the most affected households do not show symptoms at all.  That doesn’t mean they are not intoxicated, however, for arsenic is a stealthy killer.

One morning, Komola was sweeping the bare floor of her hut when her hands started to bother her.  She rubbed oil and salt on them but the pain would not go away.  She tried homeopathic remedies for six months but that did not help either.  “We’ve tried it all,” says her husband.  The kobiratj, or healer, said she could have been bitten by a snake while picking greens in the fields so he gave her an ointment made of snake poison.  Finally, Dipankar Chakraborti and his “soldiers” convinced her to go to the hospital in Calcutta.  “But when I do, they give me two pills that cost me ninety rupees.  The trip alone costs one hundred rupees (about $4).  I can’t even afford that.”

Over 50% of the rural population of West Bengal and Bangladesh survives well below the poverty line.  Komola is one of the poorest among the poor.  Like most women in the area, she suffers from malnutrition, for the choice morsels go to the men, and malnutrition is arsenic’s ally.

SOLUTIONS
Willard R.  Chapell, of the University of Colorado, Denver, stated in the Third International Conference on Arsenic, held in Dhaka, July 2000, that “a good deal of the crops grown in the Ganges delta are being irrigated with deep-well water high in arsenic content.”  This may mean that arsenic is making its way into the food chain.  Although these studies are in their infancy, Ainun Nishat, geologist and country representative for the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in Bangladesh, said in an interview in Dhaka that “recent findings show that arsenic does not in fact pollute the grain of rice that Bengalis eat, but stays in the hull.” This would be good news, except that the animals eat the rice hulls...  When asking Chakraborti about food chain contamination, he nods and adds: “Nature, like any mother, is trying to save us, but even she has her limits.” 

The first priority is to supply the population with arsenic-free water.  But this is no easy task.  To begin with, the polluted wells must be identified.  A great deal of wells are being analyzed and the pumps of the polluted ones are being painted red, the non-polluted ones, green.  This solution is hardly the best one in a region hit by monsoons a few months every year.  The paint is easily washed away by the torrential rains and floods, and that confuses the peasants.  

A neighboring family draws near Komola.  All four members have their skin covered with sores.  “During the flood, the water comes up to our necks and all the wells become polluted.  What water are we supposed to drink then?”

Furthermore, the arsenic deposits shift around in the alluvial subsoil, so green wells today may supply contaminated water tomorrow.  Therefore, the wells need testing at least every three months.  Unfortunately, the equipment used to test water is not entirely reliable.  “Anywhere from 30 to 40% of the pumps, whether painted red or green, are incorrectly marked,” says Chakraborti.  A law that would require every home to catch rainwater from their roof would be ideal but, as things stand, this is exceedingly costly.  

In a little village close to Sonargaon, there are several rainwater catchment tanks, each one supplying only one household.  “But it only lasts five months,” complains a villager, “afterwards we go on drinking the ‘red’ water."  A hundred yards away, a communal well flaunts a large filter.  We ask why they don’t get water from that well when the rainwater runs out.  His wife moans that she doesn’t have the strength to go that far; the husband says that it’s women’s work, that he leaves at 6 a.m.  and doesn’t get back until 10 p.m.  from working at the jute factory.  Their shack is built of corrugated roofing, but inside sparkle a Sony TV and VCR, as well as a Kelvinator fridge.  I ask whether they couldn’t ask a young woman in the village to fetch them water for a small amount.  “We don’t have money.  Besides, it’s the government’s problem.  Let them bring us water.”

Cultural taboos don’t help either.  Girls grow up carrying water for the family and boys and men refuse to do that chore even if the women lack the strength; it would be humiliating.  The state of women’s rights is deplorable.  Bangladesh is the second country in the world in terms of domestic violence against women.  Nutritionally, women fare far worse than men, even while pregnant, which makes them more prone to arsenic poisoning.  The sick are told they are under a gajab, or curse of nature.  Many are forbidden to leave their homes, and some husbands even refuse to mourn their dead wives.  Often, neighbors don’t allow the sick to drink water from green wells.  Consequently, many people do not confess to being ill and don’t dare to see a doctor for fear of social rejection.  Children make up 25% percent of  Zamman’s patients with skin disorders.  The school’s doors have been closed to them.  They can’t play with the other children any more.

“In any case, the woman is the heart of the household.  If she is informed, everyone will be,” says Chakraborti.  “Not only do we have to raise the consciousness of mothers as to the scope of the problem, we also have to educate them in regards to nutrition.  The community must be included in the project as well, they should take part in the decision-making process.”

Another short-term solution would be to provide every home with an arsenic filter, but they are not very effective.  This would also raise the 
question of how to dispose of the residue.  In a village near Najirpur’s, all twenty huts (about 150 people) share a system of outdoor filters and three water tanks.  There are two plastic spouts.  One of them is out of service and plugged with a rag.  They comment that it broke a few months ago but no one has come to fix it, that they all shared the six hundred takas (about $10) it cost to install it and it’s not their problem to fix it.  We ask whether it would be expensive to fix and if the part is available in the village.  They answer that it can be bought at the market a couple of miles away for five takas (about 8 cents).  We suggest that for one quarter of a taka per family they could get it fixed right away and the women wouldn’t have to go through the nuisance of lining up every morning and evening.  They grin, ignoring the idea.  After all, the men work at the jute factory everyday, where they have access to water without arsenic.  Besides, the government should provide.  What difference does it make if it is too late?

In 1997, the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged that water pollution by arsenic in Bangladesh was a “serious public health matter,” and in August 1998 (five years after Chakraborti raised the alarm) the World Bank approved an interest-free loan (not a contribution) of 32.4 million dollars.  Switzerland contributed three more million, and the Bengali government and the local communities another nine million.  “We’re very surprised with what the government and the donor countries have done,” points out Zamman, “when ‘mad-cow disease’ struck Europe, the farmers were compensated for it.  But here in Bangladesh, the affected don’t get restitution, they only get a loan.” 

Najirpur, who decided not to lose his words to the birds, invited us into his mud hut.  In the kitchen, he offered us spicy snacks and water from his red well.  “It’s filtered,” he exclaims, showing us his filter consisting of three superimposed clay pots.  “Some days I want to smash it; I know it can’t cure me,” he expresses with a heaving sigh.  Casually, he throws the filter residue into the lagoon beside the shack, not knowing that he is perpetuating arsenic’s lethal cycle in his own well, in his own backyard. © 2001 Chelo Alvarez
*    *    *

SIDEBARS AND PHOTO CAPTIONS 

BOX P.  77
ARSENIC
Today, arsenic is used in the bronze industry, in fireworks, in pesticides, in the manufacturing of transistors and microchips, and even as laser material that transforms electricity into light.  However, it is best known for its toxicity.  A dose of about four ounces of arsenic would be enough to kill a person but smaller doses would do the job covertly.  Even though the Environment Protection Agency (EPA)’s standards for arsenic content in water used to be approximately one millionth of 1.75 ounces (0.00000175 oz.) per quart, arsenic’s reputation as a carcinogenic has caused the Agency to lower its present standard to approximately a tenth of a millionth of 0.35 ounces (0.000000035 oz.) per quart.  In any case, given the lack of appropriate testing methods, this is only a temporary guideline.  Measuring the content of arsenic in water requires sophisticated lab tests with costly spectrometers of atomic absorption.

“Forty-seven of the sixty-four districts in Bangladesh have over 0.00000175 ounces (one millionth of 1.75 oz.) of arsenic per quart in their water,” says Chakraborti.  Besides, many wells present concentrations of arsenic well above acceptable levels.

Poisoning by arsenic is cumulative.  Minute amounts of the element slowly build up, bringing about physical symptoms like malignant melanomas, keratosis, and skin disorders that lead to gangrene.  Little by little, the metal accumulates in a protein in the skin, poisoning the tissues until the cells stop working properly.  It may take five years for the symptoms to appear on the skin, and if water with arsenic continues to be ingested, within the following ten years cancer will take over the inner organs.

Presently, there is no remedy for arsenicism and in its late stages (when cancer is already present) it is irreversible.  Besides, it is difficult to study this contaminant for it produces cancer in humans but not in lab animals.

P.  72
Some citizens of Bikeda, Bangladesh, poisoned by arsenic.  Children make up 25% of the afflicted.  Above, skin marks characteristic of the disease.

P.  73
THE CHEMICAL
It took Dr. Chakraborti a while to make the connection between the skin ailments and the drinking water.  In 1993, he devoted himself to the fight against arsenic but was dismissed as an alarmist.  Neither the Indian government nor UNICEF would listen to him for five years.

P.  77
Previous page: Husena and Fukin, the first two women diagnosed with arsenicism in Rukur.  Opposite: Abdul Rashid, seriously ill, and his wife Rashida.

THE EPIDEMIC
Between 35 and 77 million people may suffer from arsenicism in the delta of the Ganges.  “The scope of this problem is without precedent, as were the accidents in Bhopal and Chernobyl, but the public opinion has turned a deaf ear.

P.  78
The symptoms of arsenicism, as in the discoloring of the skin and the hand deformities below, give the impression of leprosy to its victims.

P.  79
THE VICTIMS
Komola’s hands are a cluster of black warts.  “People don’t buy  my vegetables any more at the market in Calcutta.  They run away when they see my hands, but I have to keep trying, for my daughter.”

P.  80
Department of Health workers paint polluted wells red.  The floods wash away the paint.

THE SOLUTION
There is no easy solution nor the will to set it in motion.  The polluted wells would have to be identified, but then the tests are not reliable.  To provide water filters poses the problem of what to do with the residue.  Cultural taboos don’t help either. © 2001 Chelo Alvarez. chelico1@earthlink.net