Hydronarratives: The Confluence of Water and Environmental Justice

Social Consequences of Arsenic Poisoning in Bangladesh

Impact on Livelihood and Gender Disparity

Although the health consequences are dire, arsenic poisoning victims are also met with a variety of social hurdles. Arsenic-affected individuals are often ostracized by their communities, as the condition is frequently mistakenly perceived as contagious. Because of this, they experience social exclusion, where they are barred from community activities and at times are rejected by family members. Further, women who exhibit symptoms of arsenicosis often struggle to find partners in marriage. Sometimes wives face divorce due to their condition. One example of this is Pinjira Begum, a twenty-five-year-old mother of three. Pinjira’s husband took a second wife because according to him, “She was pretty once, but now she is too thin and smells bad and is uglier by the day”. Pinjira, who was already extremely sick, now must sleep a few feet away from her husband and his new bride. For children, when exhibiting symptoms, they are often kept from going to school to hide their condition. Obviously, this affects their prospects and educational opportunities. In the work world, employers are reluctant to hire arsenic-affected individuals because of misconceptions about the disease. Daily life for arsenic victims is clearly inhibited in a variety of significant ways due to the stigmatization around the illness.  Even though the stigmatization of arsenic poisoning is significant, men often make poor decisions for their households on choosing to drink clean water. While women are typically responsible for water collection and understand the detriments of drinking poisoned water, they lack decision making regarding water safety for their households. For instance, one teenage girl reported to Farhana Sultana that “My father said we’ll have to drink this water [from the red tubewell] and that we shouldn’t go to the bazaar to get water from the green tubewell. It is not allowed”. Surprisingly, this is not the only instance where men command that their wives and children continue collecting contaminated water when there are safer, alternative options.

Socioeconomic Impact on Patients

As much as the arsenic crisis in Bangladesh is an issue of health and social consequences, there is also an equally colossal socioeconomic impact. Arsenic contamination disproportionately affects the poor because the people that are malnourished are at the highest risk of negative health effects from consuming arsenic infected water. The majority of Arsenicosis patients, seventy-one percent, belong to low-income groups, while all the remaining patients are middle class. Of these patients, 82% have lower levels of education and 91% are suffering from malnutrition. These problems are multiplied when the poor are non-literate and from countries lacking experience in environmental law. In the case of Bangladeshi sufferers, these factors apply to nearly all victims. Further, the loss of work hours and expenditures on treatment create even worsened economic conditions for the already poor patients.
 

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