National

‘12pc people living with arsenic risk’

Around twelve percent people of Bangladesh are living under the threat of arsenic poisoning from groundwater, said Local government, rural development and cooperatives minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain on Saturday.In response to the question of Chittagong-4 constituency lawmaker Didarul Alam, the minister informed this at Jatiya Sangsad.The minister said, the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) examined over 50 lakhs tube wells in 271 upazilas of the country in 2003.Of those, around 14.5 lakhs (over 29 percent) tube wells contained over 50 ppb (parts per billion) of arsenic, which is more than the standard.