Safe to drink?

Citation

Wilson, H.C. (2003), "Safe to drink?", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 12 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2003.07312eaa.001

Safe to drink?

In the developed nations we take the right to believe that the water we drink is safe as a norm. We would not contemplate allowing our families to drink water that we believed was potentially harmful, to the extent that one of the fastest growing commercial areas is that of bottled “natural” water, as we believe that the purification methods that are employed in the treatment of our drinking water supplies are inadequate. In my local food supermarket I can purchase water from many various local spring sources throughout the UK. Not only that, I can, if I so wished, purchase bottled water from France, Spain, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia.

Therefore, we have a choice, based on financial resources, of the source of our drinking water. Unfortunately, that is not the prerogative of the vast majority of the people on this earth.

For instance, would you allow your family to drink water that was heavily contaminated with arsenic? Would you allow your food to be cooked in such water? I doubt if you would – I certainly would not find that acceptable. Yet for hundreds of millions of people this is the situation that they face. They have no option but to use such contaminated water supplies.

Long term exposure to water borne arsenic will lead to skin lesions and cancers, as well as other toxin-related conditions. For example, in Bangladesh alone, over 50 million people are at risk of the long and short term effects of arsenic laden water supplies. These water supplies are the sole water supplies for these communities. They do not have the option of purchasing bottled water supplies nor do the NGOs have the resources to supply such large numbers of communities with such supplies.

Until about 20 years ago few people in these areas drank groundwater until they were persuaded by aid agencies that it was safer than surface water which had been contaminated by sewage.

In 1998 the World Bank gave the Bangladeshi government $32m to clean up the groundwater sources but by 2003 less than $7m had been spent. Now, the World Bank officials are demanding that the Bangladeshi government hand over the money to the affected villages.

This, to my mind, raises serious concerns that I have previously raised in the editorials. Aid is only effective if what is being offered is better than what exists, and for those millions of people now drinking groundwater contaminated by arsenic, instead of surface water which may be polluted by sewage or disease bearing-bacteria, the difference is minimal. Before western aid agencies begin to change peoples’ way of life they must be as certain as possible that the change is beneficial and has no harmful effects, otherwise they will lose the trust of those that they are trying to help and they will also lose the trust of those donating the aid to them.

Also, money given as aid or as loans, has to be directed and supervised in its use and distribution. For large sums of money to be given directly to governments of countries that are virtually bankrupt and then to expect those governments to use all of that money for the proscribed tasks without direct supervision or control is being naive at best or criminally negligent at worst.

This is a world of limited resources that are unequally divided, and the distribution of aid and the influence of that aid on those who need it most must be strictly monitored and justified. The poor and needy of this unequal world live in hope of better days and well-directed and closely monitored aid can be their salvation in the short term and give them the will and resources to create a better life for themselves in the long term. Horror stories of public donations leading to increase in deaths due to cancer arising from arsenic contaminated water supplies instituted by aid agencies, or misappropriation of tax-raised monies from developed nations by governments that are in serious financial plight, makes for extremely bad publicity and serious questions being raised by the people in the developed nations as to whether or not such assistance is worthwhile if there are no effective monitoring or control systems in place.

Henry C. Wilson