Anara was a teenage Kyrgyz girl with ambitions of a college education and a career of her own, perhaps as a lawyer. She would have been the first in her family to pursue higher education, and one of the first in her rural Kyrgyz town. Just weeks after her 17th birthday, her close friend asked her to come along to the town’s water spout to collect water for the day.
The convenience of turning on the faucet and receiving safe, clean drinking is too often taken for granted. Many are so accustomed to the act that it would be gravely unsettling, at best, to find their water tainted with hazardous chemicals. That nightmare scenario occurred when tap water in Charleston, West Virginia ran pink and emitted a licorice-odor after 10,000 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) and 300 gallons of propylene
