Valuing the Arsenic Contamination of Groundwater in Bangladesh

Maddison, David; Catala-Luque, Rosa; Pearce, David

doi:10.1007/s10640-005-3364-z

Cited by 27 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“… Ahmad et al [2005] found that rural Bangladesh households would pay about 0.25% of average household income for arsenic free drinking water. Maddison et al [2005] estimated the aggregate willingness to pay to avoid arsenic health impacts in Bangladesh is $2.7 billion annually. Roy [2008] found that households in North 24 Parganas and Midnapore, India would pay about $7 per month for water with an arsenic concentration below 0.05 mg/L.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does a property‐specific environmental health risk create a “neighborhood” housing price stigma? Arsenic in private well water

Boyle

Kuminoff

Zhang

et al. 2010

Water Resources Research

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This paper examines the impact of arsenic contamination of groundwater on sale prices of residential properties and bare land transactions in two Maine towns, Buxton and Hollis, that rely on private wells to supply their drinking water. Prompted by tests of well water by the state of Maine, media attention focused on the communities in 1993 and 1994 when 14% of private wells were found to have arsenic concentrations exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard of 0.05 mg/L. Households could mitigate the serious health risks associated with arsenic ingestion by purchasing bottled water or by installing a reverse osmosis home treatment system. Our results indicate that the initial arsenic finding in 1993 led to significant, but temporary, 2 year decreases in property prices. This is a much shorter effect on prices than has been observed for Superfund sites, where prices can be depressed for a decade. These results suggest that a property‐specific contamination incident that is treatable may not have a long‐lasting effect on sale prices, but further research is needed to confirm if the dissipation of the price effect was actually due to the installation of in‐home water treatment systems or due to the dissipation of perceived risk once the media coverage stopped.

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Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does a property‐specific environmental health risk create a “neighborhood” housing price stigma? Arsenic in private well water

Boyle

Kuminoff

Zhang

et al. 2010

Water Resources Research

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“…The hypothetical BLMs include contingent valuation method (CVM). Several researchers use CVM to find the willingness to pay (WTP) for safe water or for better and regular supply of water services (Chowdhury, 1999;Ahmed et al, 2002;Jalan et al, 2003;Maddison et al, 2005;Haq et al, 2007;Gunatilake and Tachiiri, 2012;Coster and Otufale, 2014;Khan et al, 2014). Ahmed et al, (2002) use CVM to assess household preferences and willingness to pay for arsenic-free drinking water.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus paying for safe, better and regular water, people want to minimize the adverse effects of arsenic on health. Using CVM, Maddison et al (2005) estimate annual health cost of arsenic contamination in tube well water in Bangladesh at USD 2.7 billion.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Health costs of arsenic contamination of drinking water in Assam, India

Mahanta

Chowdhury²,

Nath

2016

Economic Analysis and Policy

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This paper estimates the health costs of arsenic contamination of drinking water in Assam, India, where 0.72 million people are affected. Applying the Three Stage Least Square (3SLS) procedure to data collected through a primary survey of 355 households in 2013, it estimates three structural equations to determine health costs due to arsenic contamination. The estimates show that the annual health cost of a 1 microgram increase in arsenic concentration is about INR 4 per household. Furthermore, if the level of arsenic concentration is reduced to the safe limit of 50 microgram per liter, the annual welfare gain for a household is estimated to be INR 862 (USD 14). Projecting these figures to the entire arsenic-affected population of Assam, the annual health cost is estimated to be about INR 0.76 million (USD 0.01 million) and the welfare gain from reducing the level of arsenic concentration to the safe limit is estimated to be INR 153 million (USD 2.49 million).The results also indicate that these health costs and welfare gains vary significantly across different levels of arsenic concentration and across districts. Finally, the paper draws policy implications for providing safe drinking water in Assam.

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“…Millions of groundwater wells were installed in Bangladesh from the 1970s onward [8], for the most part with funds from international agencies, with the goal of ending reliance on unsanitary surface water for drinking [26]. That a million or more of these wells were arsenic contaminated was long unknown [2][3][4]27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%