
Rain water collected in a tank or jar like this one
provides arsenic-free water
(Photograph courtesy, UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani)
Millions of people in Bangladesh (and in West Bengal,
India) are affected by arsenic poisoning, which causes skin lesions,
cancer, and eventually death, because of their dependence on
arsenic-contaminated groundwater for their drinking water supply.
Similar symptoms have also surfaced in Inner Mongolia, China, which if
unchecked could grow into a disaster of catastrophic proportions there
too.