Dr. Dipankar Chakravarti of Jadavpur University, West Bengal, India suggested that the arsenic in ground water was due to the withdrawal of sub-soil water for irrigation. During the lifting of water by the use of pumps air moved deep underground and dissolved arseno-pirites through an oxidisation process. Arsenic thus mixed with water. Stoppage of ground water irrigation, however, would be a difficult option for Bangladesh to take at least for now, because most of the gains in agricultural output were based on such irrigation. Again an option to discard the three million tubewells that supply drinking water to more than nine out of every ten people would be fraught with manifold problems.
Surface water has an excessive load of faecal coliform bacteria and is costly to treat.
Boiling of surface water for drinking was also not viable from an energy point of view because the people were already facing an acute scarcity of cooking fuel. Against such a backdrop options should be weighed only on the basis of accurate scientific information about the quality of water and its impact on human health keeping in view other important variables, experts said. The World Bank, it may be mentioned, is finalising a long-term project to mitigate the arsenic problem. The project would draw on the results of the survey now being carried out under the Emergency Arsenic project. The DPHE is sinking new tubewells for drinking water on the basis of test results.