Study context:

Access to safe drinking water in Bangladesh remains persistently low, despite years of effort by the Bangladeshi government and non-governmental organizations. As of 2020, an estimated 42% of the Bangladeshi population —almost 70 million people—lacked access to safely managed drinking water. Coincidentally, this is almost exactly the same rate as the average in lower-middle-income countries worldwide. Rates of water source contamination remain high for both arsenic, a naturally occurring pollutant in groundwater, and fecal contaminants.

Our study area lies near Bogura in north-western Bangladesh. Even after a previous intervention to provide community safe water sources (Cocciolo et al. 2021b), 64% of households still collect water from at least one arsenic-contaminated source. These rates of arsenic contamination correspond to an additional 4 deaths from cancer in every community. Fecal contamination is detected in drinking water in 61% of households.