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Groundwater Arsenic Contamination in Bengal Delta and Its Health Effects

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Safe and Sustainable Use of Arsenic-Contaminated Aquifers in the Gangetic Plain

Abstract

Arsenic contamination of groundwater has been detected in more than 70 countries and has become a major public health concern worldwide (Bundschuh et al. Environ Geochem Health 32:307–315, 2010). Arsenic contamination in groundwater of Southeast Asian regions received significant interest in recent years. In this region, countries affected with As in groundwater include Bangladesh, several states of India, Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan, Vietnam, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Cambodia, several provinces of China (Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Jilin, Shandong, Qinghai, Sichuan, Anhui, Heilongjiang, Henan, Gansu, Jiangsu, Yunnan and Hunan) and lowlands of Sumatra in Indonesia (Rahman et al. Environ Geochem Health 31:9–21, 2009; Yu et al. Environ Health Perspect 115:636–642, 2007).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the field workers of the School of Environmental Studies (SOES), Jadavpur University for their extensive help in the field sampling in arsenic affected villages of West Bengal in India. We also thank the field workers and the Management of the Dhaka Community Hospital, Bangladesh for their active participation in the field survey in Bangladesh. Financial support from SOES is greatly acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Studies (SOES), Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 700 032, West Bengal, India

    Mohammad Mahmudur Rahman, Khitish Chandra Saha & Dipankar Chakraborti

  2. Centre for Environmental Risk Assessment and Remediation (CERAR), University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes Campus, Mawson Lakes, SA, 5095, Australia

    Mohammad Mahmudur Rahman

  3. Department of Neurology, Medical College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Subhas Chandra Mukherjee

  4. Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, SSKM Hospital, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Shyamapada Pati

  5. Department of Dermatology, Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, SSKM Hospital, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Rathindra Nath Dutta

  6. Dhaka Community Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Shibtosh Roy, Quazi Quamruzzaman & Mahmuder Rahman

Authors
  1. Mohammad Mahmudur Rahman
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  2. Khitish Chandra Saha
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  3. Subhas Chandra Mukherjee
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  6. Shibtosh Roy
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  8. Mahmuder Rahman
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  9. Dipankar Chakraborti
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Correspondence to Dipankar Chakraborti .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    AL Ramanathan

  2. Southern Cross GeoScience, Southern Cross University, East Lismore, New South Wales, Australia

    Scott Johnston

  3. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India

    Abhijit Mukherjee

  4. School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Bibhash Nath

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Rahman, M.M. et al. (2015). Groundwater Arsenic Contamination in Bengal Delta and Its Health Effects. In: Ramanathan, A., Johnston, S., Mukherjee, A., Nath, B. (eds) Safe and Sustainable Use of Arsenic-Contaminated Aquifers in the Gangetic Plain. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16124-2_14

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