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In the early 1970s, local organizations and international agencies joined forces to combat infant mortality and provide the country with clean drinking water. Local scientists, led by Bangladesh's largest non-governmental organization, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, pioneered methods of oral rehydration therapy. Simultaneously, the World Bank and UNICEF partnered in Bangladesh to build approximately one million tubewells into the soil.

As Bangladesh's population boomed, more and more wells were built. With increased access to well water, oral rehydration therapy, and other efforts, Bangladesh became a model of how to effectively minimize infant mortality. By the early 1980s, infant mortality rates had dropped from 258 deaths per 1,000 to 75 deaths per 1,000. Recent revelations about arsenic contamination have put a chilling damper on the programs' success.

Dr. Mushtaque Chowdhury, the deputy executive director of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee and a pioneer in the country's successful oral rehydration program, understands the tension between the real success of oral rehydration and the hidden failures of the tubewells. "When UNICEF and others started helping the government of Bangladesh in sinking tubewells," he told P.H., "I don't think anybody raised any strong objection. This was primarily because of the belief that it would lessen the burden of diarrhea Ð although I understand that there was no strong scientific proof to such a belief. And also, the tubewells were so convenient to sink and get access to clean water. Unfortunately, that they didn't test the tubewells for other possible contaminants É including arsenic. The latter was a gross oversight."

Arsenic is a quiet killer. Colorless, odorless, and tasteless, it can be difficult to detect. Although extremely toxic, symptoms do not appear for up to ten years. Most water in the world contains some amount of naturally-occurring arsenic, produced by mineral dissolution, and erosion. Usually, the low levels of the chemical do not cause a problem, but in Bangladesh, where poor citizens drank contaminated water for years on end, signs of chronic poisoning began to appear in the early- to mid-1980s. Bangladeshis developed black and white spots on the chest, keratoses, swollen legs, cracked feet and hands. Already, some have contracted skin, bladder, kidney, and lung cancer.

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