The upper house of Britains parliament, the House of Lords, has thrown out an arsenic (arsén) poisoning case brought by a Bangladeshi resident, BBC Online reports Wednesday.
It ruled that he could not succeed in legal action against a British agency which he claimed should have warned him about arsenic in drinking water. The ruling said that the case brought by Binod Sutradhar was “hopeless”.
The World Health Organization says that between 28 to 35 million Bangladeshis drink arsenic contaminated water. The poisoning is naturally occurring and affects underground water supplies and water provided from wells.
The test case was brought by Binod Sutradhar, who lives in the Brahmanbaria district, 80 kms east of Dhaka. He alleged that he developed arsenic poisoning after he drank water from a shallow well dug in his village in 1983.
Mr Sutradhar was seeking to sue a branch of the British agency, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), for negligence.
His lawyers argued that the British Geological Survey (BGS) failed to detect arsenic when it conducted tests on water from deep wells in the 1980s and 1990s.
But the panel of five judges at the House of Lords – the highest court in England – all agreed that there was no duty on the BGS to test for arsenic.
