Poster 3: The installation of roughly twelve million tube wells in Bangladesh from the 1970s to the 1990s, an effort funded by the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to reduce incidence of pathogenic diseases spread through surface water, exposed 28 to 57 million people in the country to groundwater naturally contaminated with toxic levels of arsenic. This mass poisoning has revealed inequalities on a global scale, between Bangladesh, wealthier countries and international aid organizations, and on a local scale, between genders and different socio-economic groups in Bangladeshi villages and communities. The crisis proved that homogenous solutions created by international aid agencies have severe unintended consequences. These consequences include increased risk of poisoning for poorer communities, which further marginalized already disenfranchised groups of Bangladeshis and women. True solutions to future health and environmental crises will have to be much more nuanced and localized.
