What I'll be doing

Arsenic is an interesting beast. It was used in Egyptian cosmetics. It has little effect on animals, and is used in horse care to make their coats shiny. It makes for great scenes in the Princess Bride (as youu wiiiiishhh!). In well water, it has devastating health effects: victims' skin cracks to the bone, necessitating amputation; it leads to cancer and all kinds of gnarly stuff.

Arsenic is in the ground in Bangladesh, and will leach into wellwater-- but if you dig deep enough, you can avoid the layer of arsenic-containing earth. The problems is that when UNICEF came to Bangladesh in the late 70s, with all good will, they sunk tens of thousands of wells to prevent surface water contamination. Those wells were all tube wells, which were too shallow. So, unknowingly, international aid organizations contributed to a massive national problem of arsenic poisoning.

Dick, running his project through Dhaka Community Hospital (DCH) which has clinics out in the countryside, constructed about 66 dug wells that are deep, deep past the layer of arsenic. Lots of community involvement, great stuff. But now, the problem is that the villagers don't take good or regular data on bacteria levels, chlorination levels, arsenic levels, etc. in the wells.

I'm going over there to teach them how to take better data, systemize more the way they take data, and get the data to be published. I'll also be doing an ethnography (yeah aaas 199!) to determine any education, gender equality, health effects of these wells. This would be in conjunction with a School of Public Health project.