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More than 50 million people from East India and Bangladesh drink and bathe in the arsenic-polluted water from the Bengal Basin.  

Effects of arsenic poisoning range from skin lesions, which often lead to gangrene, to stomach, lung, and kidney cancer, experts say. 

“This catastrophe in Bangladesh is the worst in the world,” said Professor Richard Wilson of Harvard, who studies arsenic poisoning worldwide. 

Wilson was one of many speakers at UC Berkeley Saturday, at a seminar sponsored by the Bengal Basin Working Group, started by Berkeley resident Rash Ghosh. 

Ghosh, 51, is a native of rural Bajitpur, Bangladesh. An activist and experienced toxicologist, Ghosh recruits scientists and activists internationally to help those suffering in his homeland. 

“Many villagers tell me, ‘I don’t have food. Why should I care for the environment?’” said Ghosh.  

“I say, ‘Do you love your children? Then you need to have clean water for them.’ There’s been a tremendous response. That makes me work harder than ever,” he added. 

Working along with basin locals, the group hopes to find long and short-term solutions to measure and eradicate arsenic from basin drinking water. 

Simple, cheap solutions made from locally available materials are needed in order to save those in the basin, said Wilson. 

A filtering system made of sand and iron filings removes much of the water-soluble arsenic, he said. But it’s only available in about 50,000 homes thus far, he added. 

Inge Harding-Barlow, a noted toxicologist and co-founder of the group, hopes to find basin plants that, when eaten, raise arsenic tolerance. 

“The crucial question is getting the villagers to do it,” Wilson said. The Bangladesh government has not adequately educated its citizens on arsenic poisoning and how to avoid it, he added. 

Of even more concern is how to dispose of the resulting sludge, which holds the concentrated arsenic. “You end up with a high level that makes disposing of nuclear waste look easy,” Wilson said. 

In 1992, Ghosh and Harding-Barlow discovered alarming amounts of arsenic in the basin. The poison had been used as fertilizer for decades, Ghosh said. 

In the sixties, Bengalis often died of water-borne diseases from consuming bacteria-infested surface water.  

To stem death tolls, UNICEF and the World Bank funded the building of tubewells, simple wells running eight meters deep. They were cheap and easy to build, Ghosh said. 

However, the well water was laden with arsenic.  

But, said Wilson, no single group is to blame for the tragedy.  

“The British Geological Survey tested the water and said it was perfectly safe,” Wilson said. “But they didn’t test for arsenic.” 

Here in Berkeley, Ghosh found support from many scientists and students at the university.  

Although there is no official affiliation between the school and Ghosh’s group, 28 students in the natural and environmental sciences have volunteered to study the basin. 

“The real blessing is the UC Berkeley students,” said Ghosh. “I have 15 PhDs wanting to work with me on a project. They didn’t ask me for money, they said, ‘We’ll bring our own money.’ I was amazed!” 

Rishi Das, 24, volunteered as an undergraduate while taking classes from Associate Professor Claudia Carr, who also works on the basin project. Das’ family is originally from rural West Bengal. 

“It’s part of a larger problem,” said Das. “In a lot of third world countries, pollution is a problem.” 

Ghosh hopes the group will be an inspiration to other developing nations finding their water supplies in danger due to industrialization, he said. 

“Although we’re studying the Bengal Basin, we want to use our experience to help other emerging economies,” Ghosh said.