Silent killer taking toll
Villagers emerge from the shade of their homes and gingerly roll up their sleeves, turning their palms upwards to reveal skin braided with dark lesions, ulcers and decaying tissue. They point to houses up and down the street where people have died of symptoms like theirs. Arsenic, an invisible, odourless poison, has haunted this village in Kandal’s Koh Thom district. Most have been diagnosed with arsenic poisoning, and many have lost children or parents to it. … Starting in the 1980s, a UNICEF-led safe-water program pioneered Cambodia’s vast network of community tube wells, installing pumps as an easy and inexpensive alternative to bacteria-infested surface water. An independent report commissioned by UNICEF in 2006, however, found that such tube wells installed in arsenic-affected areas were contaminated. … Thirty-five per cent of more than 15,000 wells sampled in Kandal contained arsenic exceeding the national limit of 0.05 milligrams per litre, and as many as 54 per cent measured above the WHO standard of 0.01 milligrams per litre. …
Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/silent-killer-taking-toll
