Unicef was the main proponent of these wells, creating its own designs and providing the materials to the Bangladeshi government, which, in turn, paid the drilling costs. One tested only surface water, especially to see if rivers and streams were polluted by chemicals and industrial waste. While some experts now fault Unicef for failing to do exhaustive testing, there is no denying that the tube well program saved millions of lives. Reliable statistics are hard to come by here, but there is general agreement that mortality rates attributed to diarrhea, the nation's major killer, have plunged. Convinced with great effort that ground water is the safest to drink, villagers are now beginning to be told that this is not necessarily so.
Some people react with outrage, some stoicism.
Almost all are baffled. In Miapur, in northwest Bangladesh, the government recently sealed up 8 contaminated wells only to have villagers undo the work. The arsenic's slow creep affects people differently, with some family members showing signs of the poisoning while others do not. Some doctors suggest that nutrition may be a critical factor in who gets sick, but many villagers are inclined to attribute such things to the will of Allah or their own superstitions. There are those who believe a poisoned well is a sign that a snake has been struck during the digging.