IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v59y2004i8p1741-1755.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Arsenic contamination awareness among the rural residents in Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Paul, Bimal Kanti

Abstract

Arsenic poisoning of tubewell water, which constitutes the primary source of drinking water, has become the greatest health threat to the people of rural Bangladesh. Somewhere between 35 to 57 million people in the country are now suspected of being affected by drinking water contaminated with arsenic. While the Bangladesh government, non-government organizations (NGOs), and bilateral and multilateral assistance agencies are involved in combating this dreadful problem, all of their efforts to date have proceeded without having grassroots information about arsenic poisoning. The objectives of this study are to investigate the level of knowledge rural residents have regarding arsenic poisoning and to identify the correlates of that knowledge. Questionnaire surveys administered among residents of four rural areas in Bangladesh provided the major data source for this study. Twenty villages were selected from moderate and low arsenic risk regions and a total of 356 respondents, 177 from medium risk regions and 179 from low risk regions, were interviewed. Analysis of the survey data reveals that arsenic awareness is currently not widespread in the study villages, particularly in the low arsenic risk region. There are also gaps in arsenic knowledge regarding the diseases caused by arsenic poisoning and mitigating measures available to prevent contamination. This study identified arsenic risk region, level of education, gender, and age as important determinants of arsenic knowledge. The findings of this study will aid in making existing health education programs more effective and in reducing the risk of developing arsenic-related illnesses.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul, Bimal Kanti, 2004. "Arsenic contamination awareness among the rural residents in Bangladesh," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(8), pages 1741-1755, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:59:y:2004:i:8:p:1741-1755
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00054-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sarker, M. Mizanur Rahman, 2012. "Spatial modeling of households’ knowledge about arsenic pollution in Bangladesh," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(8), pages 1232-1239.
    2. Peter Atkins & Manzurul Hassan & Christine Dunn, 2007. "Environmental Irony: Summoning Death in Bangladesh," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(11), pages 2699-2714, November.
    3. Johanna Brinkel & Mobarak H. Khan & Alexander Kraemer, 2009. "A Systematic Review of Arsenic Exposure and Its Social and Mental Health Effects with Special Reference to Bangladesh," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 6(5), pages 1-11, May.
    4. Hollynd Boyden & Mayela Gillan & Javier Molina & Ashok Gadgil & Winston Tseng, 2023. "Community Perceptions of Arsenic Contaminated Drinking Water and Preferences for Risk Communication in California’s San Joaquin Valley," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-18, January.
    5. Md Rokonuzzaman & Zhihong Ye & Chuan Wu & Wai-Chin Li, 2023. "Arsenic Elevated Groundwater Irrigation: Farmers’ Perception of Rice and Vegetable Contamination in a Naturally Arsenic Endemic Area," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(6), pages 1-19, March.
    6. Teresa Hooks & Geertje Schuitema & Frank McDermott, 2019. "Risk Perceptions Toward Drinking Water Quality Among Private Well Owners in Ireland: The Illusion of Control," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(8), pages 1741-1754, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:59:y:2004:i:8:p:1741-1755. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.