Pearce’s overarching theme this section of the pitfalls of pumping from aquifers, whether it be in the American midwest, North Africa, of Asia, was illuminating and troubling, as he highlighted again and again in each of his examples how quickly and often wastefully groundwater resources are depleted, and how few alternatives there are once those groundwater reserves are gone. The part of this section I found most disturbing was the mass poisoning of the Bangladeshi people due to arsenic contamination of the water wells across much of their country. The statistic Pearce offered, that more than 1 out of 20 deaths in the country were a result of arsenic poisoning, was staggering. I was surprised to learn that these arsenic deposits were naturally occuring, and common in delta regions with new inland sediments and alkaline inland drainage basins, as my first guess would have been that the arsenic levels were related to some form of man-made pollution.
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