Up to 20 million people in Bangladesh are at risk of suffering early deaths because of arsenic poisoning -- the legacy of a well-intentioned but ill-planned water project that created a devastating public health catastrophe. Bangladesh's arsenic crisis dates back to the 1970s when, in an effort to improve the quality of drinking water and counter diarrhoea, there was large-scale international investment in building tube wells. It was believed the wells would provide safe supplies for families, otherwise dependent on dirty surface water which was killing up to 250,000 children a year. The arsenic contaminating so much of Bangladesh's water occurs naturally in the water courses of the rivers that sustain hundreds of millions of people.
