Status of groundwater arsenic contamination in Bangladesh: A 14-year study report

Since 1996, 52,202 water samples from hand tubewells were analyzed for arsenic (As) by flow injection hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry (FI-HG-AAS) from all 64 districts of Bangladesh; 27.2% and 42.1% of the tubewells had As above 50 and 10 μg/l, respectively; 7.5% contained As above 300 μg/l, the concentration predicting overt arsenical skin lesions. The groundwater of 50 districts contained As above the Bangladesh standard for As in drinking water (50 μg/l), and 59 districts had As above the WHO guideline value (10 μg/l). Water analyses from the four principal geomorphological regions of Bangladesh showed that hand tubewells of the Tableland and Hill tract regions are primarily free from As contamination, while the Flood plain and Deltaic region, including…