Press Release

OPEC Fund supports research into arsenic contamination in Bangladesh

27/2005 March 15, 2005, Vienna, Austria

The OPEC Fund for International Development today approved a grant of US$50,000 to co-finance a pilot project in Bangladesh to reduce the level of arsenic poisoning from contaminated water supplies. The project is being implemented by Harvard University , in cooperation with the Dhaka Community Hospital, which have been working on a permanent solution to the problem.

While it has long been known that arsenic taken in high doses is acutely poisonous, its cancerous effects from ingestion at sub-acute levels have only recently become understood. In Bangladesh , the poison is inherent in the country’s groundwater supply, and an estimated 35 million people are exposed to the poison at levels that are dangerously high.

Following research that measured arsenic levels in “dugwells” with a view to identifying the nature and cause of the contamination, scientists at Harvard University have recently developed a methodology for digging wells to specifications that avoid arsenic contamination. The original research was co-financed with an earlier OPEC Fund grant in 2001.

The proposed pilot project aims to demonstrate the new methodology to villagers on a small scale before replicating it on a wider basis.