A few days ago around noon, rickshaw puller Abdus Salam dropped a passenger near Khamarbari intersection and stepped off his vehicle in front of a tea stall. He told the street vendor to give him a piece of bread and some tea.
While gulping the bread, the man in his late 20s asked for a glass of water. The tea seller poured some water from a jar placed on a table and handed the glass over to him. Salam drank the water believing it was filtered and safe. The vendor had the same belief.
They were probably wrong. The water was most likely to be hazardous. In fact, it might have contained fecal coliform, a bacterium found in human excreta.
A government study has revealed that almost all such jar water sold across the capital carries risky level of the bacterium, also called fecal E. coli.
The presence of E. coli indicates that other pathogenic bacteria and viruses, responsible for diseases like cholera, typhoid, dysentery and jaundice, may also be found in the water, health experts say.
The study found 1 to more than 1,600 MPN (most probable number) of E. coli in a 100-millilitre sample of drinking water. According to BSTI standards, it was supposed to be zero, says the paper of the study conducted by Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (Barc).
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