Buriganga River
The rivers are economically very important for Bangladesh's over-populated urban areas and particularly for the riparian communities living along them. Today, the Buriganga in Dhaka and the Karnaphuli in Chittagong are affected by an immense pollution issue. In Dhaka, the authorities estimate that more than sixty thousand cubic metres of toxic wate is released in the waterways every day. Tanneries alone release daily more than twenty thousand liter of untreated toxic waste water into the Buriganga, exposing nearly four million people to respiratory and skin diseases and contaminated water. Children collecting waste in the heavily polluted Buriganga river, Dhaka, Bangladesh, May 2014