DHAKA, Sept 21: A scientist has developed a water filter that could save millions of poverty-hit Bangladeshis from arsenic poisoning, a report said Saturday.

Fakrul Islam, a teacher of chemistry in the Rajshahi University in northwest Bangladesh, has developed the “Shapla Arsenic Filter” which experts are hailing as a “major breakthrough”, according to the official BSS news agency.

Islam’s project was funded by the non-governmental organisation International Development Enterpise (IDE) and has been successfully tested in 800 homes in areas where drinking water has been contaminated by arsenic.

The device operates on the absorption of arsenic by passing water through heated crushed brick particles with iron salt at a specific temperature.

This in turn forms “dispersed activated iron oxides in and on the pores of the brick particles,” which filter the arsenic in the water.

David B. Nunley, IDE’s country director, said “the crisis of arsenic contamination has the potential to be the largest natural calamity the world has ever known.”

“The Shapla Arsenic Filter is a major breakthrough in a situation that threatens to kill many more people in years to come,” he said.

Experts believe that up to 30 million Bangladeshis, mostly poor, are faced with slow poisoning by drinking arsenic-contaminated water, with another 80 million of Bangladesh’s 130 million population “under potential risk.”

“The hardest task facing us is to get villagers to realise that the water they are drinking contains arsenic many times more than United Nations guidelines,” Islam told BSS.

“Most of these people do not understand that they are being slowly poisoned to death,” he said.

The presence of naturally occurring arsenic in Bangladesh’s groundwater in large parts of the shed country was first detected in the early 1990s, but during the past several years became a priority on the health agenda.

The popular tube-wells introduced to combat diarrhoea and cholera in the 1960s turned out to be the main cause for arsenic contamination as water levels fell. The new filter is affordable and easy to operate, BSS said.—AFP