Greetings all,

Here are several arsenic crisis related news articles and a
scientific article not previously reported in arsenic-crisis or the
ACIC website ( http://bicn.com/acic ).

All authors: PLEASE do post information about your recent and
upcoming arsenic crisis related publications to arsenic-
crisis@yahoogroups.com !

Regards

Sara Bennett
Moderator

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[not available online - that I can find]

Bailing Arsenic from Bangladesh's Water. Water Technology News,
August 2003 v11 i5 p0 - COPYRIGHT 2003 Business Communications
Company, Inc.

Developing a simple two-bucket system, Canada-based aluminum
conglomerate Alcan is hoping to give Bangladeshi villagers an easy
and effective way to decontaminate arsenic-riddled groundwater.
Connected by a hose, the first bucket is colored red and is filled
with granules of alumina, an aluminum oxide. When arsenic-laced
water is poured in, the alumina molecules bond with the arsenic,
removing the poison. The purified water then flows into the second
bucket, colored green, ready to drink.

The product, called Actiguard, is a simplified version of a product
Alcan already sells to communities in the United States for
filtering well water laced with a variety of impurities from arsenic
to zinc. Alcan developed an enhanced alumina granule that's shaped
in such a way that the amount of exposed surface is maximized,
thereby increasing contact between the water and alumina molecules
and giving the alumina more opportunities to grab onto the arsenic.
Alcan says maintenance of the two-bucket system is easy. The buckets
need to be cleaned periodically to remove residue and debris, and
the alumina granules have to be replaced when they lose their
adsorption. The company says the spent granules can be mixed into
concrete and used to pave roads.

Alcan estimates that the buckets cost about $3.20 per person per
year.

Contact: Ken Evans, Alcan Inc., 1188 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal,
Quebec, Canada H3A 3G2; Tel: 514/848-8000, Fax: 514/848- 8115.

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[ http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2003/5966/abstract.html ]

Arsenic Groundwater Contamination in Middle Ganga Plain, Bihar,
India: A Future Danger? Dipankar Chakraborti, Subhash C. Mukherjee,
Shyamapada Pati, Mrinal K. Sengupta, Mohammad M. Rahman, Uttam K.
Chowdhury, Dilip Lodh, Chitta R. Chanda, Anil K. Chakraborti, and
Gautam K. Basu. Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 111,
Number 9, July 2003.

Abstract: The pandemic of arsenic poisoning due to contaminated
groundwater in West Bengal, India, and all of Bangladesh has been
thought to be limited to the Ganges Delta (the Lower Ganga Plain),
despite early survey reports of arsenic contamination in groundwater
in the Union Territory of Chandigarh and its surroundings in the
northwestern Upper Ganga Plain and recent findings in the Terai area
of Nepal. Anecdotal reports of arsenical skin lesions in villagers
led us to evaluate arsenic exposure and sequelae in the Semria Ojha
Patti village in the Middle Ganga Plain, Bihar, where tube wells
replaced dug wells about 20 years ago. Analyses of the arsenic
content of 206 tube wells (95% of the total) showed that 56.8%
exceeded arsenic concentrations of 50 ug/L, with 19.9% > 300 ug/L,
the concentration predicting overt arsenical skin lesions. On
medical examination of a self-selected sample of 550 (390 adults and
160 children), 13% of the adults and 6.3% of the children had
typical skin lesions, an unusually high involvement for children,
except in extreme exposures combined with malnutrition. The urine,
hair, and nail concentrations of arsenic correlated significantly (r
= 0.72-0.77) with drinking water arsenic concentrations up to 1,654
ug/L. On neurologic examination, arsenic-typical neuropathy was
diagnosed in 63% of the adults, a prevalence previously seen only in
severe, subacute exposures. We also observed an apparent increase in
fetal loss and premature delivery in the women with the highest
concentrations of arsenic in their drinking water. The possibility
of contaminated groundwater at other sites in the Middle and Upper
Ganga Plain merits investigation.


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[ http://www.sciencenews.org/20021123/fob6ref.asp ]

Arsenic Agriculture? Irrigation may worsen Bangladesh's woes. B.
Harder. Science News, Nov 23, 2002 v162 i21 p325(2). Full text
copyright 2002 Science Service, Inc.

Researchers investigating an unfolding, massive epidemic of arsenic
poisoning in Bangladesh say they have evidence that local irrigation
practices may be contributing to the problem.

Charles F. Harvey of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
his colleagues now posit that pumping water for irrigation alters
the flow of subterranean water in ways that draw naturally occurring
arsenic into aquifers.

But other researchers investigating the region's geology argue that
the new finding supports only a limited culpability for irrigation.
They point their fingers instead at buried peat deposits, which they
say foster chemical reactions that introduce the arsenic into
aquifers. Officials need to know the process behind the poisoning to
minimize the health impacts.

The people of Bangladesh depend on millions of wells dug since 1970
for irrigation and drinking water. Years into the flurry of
construction, scientists discovered that many of the wells contain
toxic concentrations of arsenic, which can cause various cancers and
other health problems (SN: 4/6;/02, p. 214). Seventy-seven million
Bangladeshis are either sick from or considered at high risk for
arsenic-related diseases.

To explore whether the expanding practice of irrigation since the
1970s is related to arsenic contamination, Harvey and his colleagues
drilled 17 new wells--ranging in depth from 5 to 165 meters--on a
small plot in central Bangladesh. They measured the arsenic and
other substances in water and sediment extracted from cores bored
into the plot. Concentrations of both arsenic and dissolved organic-
carbon compounds increased with depth in the wells and reached peaks
at 30 to 40 m, the researchers report in the Nov. 22 Science.

The scientists also injected different fluids into the ground and
found that molasses, which is rich in organic-carbon, rapidly
increased arsenic concentrations in the test wells. Harvey's team
suggests that organic carbon feeds chemical reactions that liberate
arsenic from minerals in the soil. The poison then dissolves in
water and migrates into aquifers.

Pumping of well water for irrigation in the past few decades has
accelerated the speed at which carbon-rich surface water moves
downward to replenish aquifers, the researchers argue. They estimate
that it may take as little as 7 years for pumping to draw dissolved
organic carbon down to a depth of 30 m, deep enough to enter aquifer
systems.

Although the study makes "a very valuable contribution," says Peter
Ravenscroft of Cambridge, England, he's not convinced that arsenic
enters aquifers only when surface water percolates rapidly downward.
That model doesn't explain why arsenic is a severe problem in parts
of the country where irrigation is uncommon, says Ravenscroft, a
long-time water geologist in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, he and John M. McArthur of University College London
argue that buried deposits of peat may better account for the
overall pattern of arsenic poisoning. If organic carbon from
irrigation were as important as Harvey's group suggests, then it
should be most concentrated at the surface, McArthur says. Peat
deposits, he points out, often are found at depths of 30 to 40 m,
just where Harvey's group detected the highest arsenic
concentrations.

Harvey notes that the plot his team studied may not be
representative of all affected areas. So, despite his team's
findings, he cautions against hasty changes in irrigation practices.


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[ http://www.sciencenews.org/20020406/fob6ref.asp ]

Blood vessel poisoning: arsenic narrows artery that feeds brain. B.
Harder. Brief Article, Science News, April 6, 2002 v161 i14 p214
(1). Full text copyright 2002 Science Service, Inc.

New research suggests that drinking arsenic-laden water can produce
dangerous narrowing in the carotid artery, which channels blood
through the neck to the brain. The newly identified arsenic risk
joins a slew of health problems, including other cardiovascular
conditions and several cancers, previously linked to consumption of
the poisonous metal.

"Long-term arsenic exposure may lead to the progression or
acceleration of carotid artery disease," says Chien-Jen Chen of
National Taiwan University in Taipei, a member of the study team.

The metal's hormone-disrupting actions may underlie some of its
poisonous effects (SN: 3/17/01, p. 164). Other problems may result
from growth that arsenic might trigger in tissues such as those that
line artery walls, says Aaron Barchowsky of Dartmouth Medical School
in Hanover, N.H.

Several U.S. states and parts of countries such as Bangladesh,
Chile, and Taiwan have naturally high concentrations of arsenic in
groundwater. Worldwide, more than 100 million people are exposed to
high-arsenic water, Chen estimates. He and his colleagues have been
studying arsenic's health effects in southwestern Taiwan, where
tainted wells provided people with drinking water for more than half
a century before being phased out in the mid-1970s.

In the current study, Chen and his team questioned 436 people, all
of whom had lived near arsenic-contaminated wells for at least 6
months. The researchers asked the volunteers about factors that
could play a role in cardiovascular disease. Following the
interviews, the researchers used ultrasound scanning to identify
people whose carotid arteries exhibit atherosclerosis--vessel
narrowing because of either plaque formation or vessel-wall
thickening.

After accounting for other factors that affect the arteries--age,
sex, blood pressure, cholesterol concentration in blood, diabetes,
smoking, and alcohol use--the researchers found that both the
duration and degree of exposure to high-arsenic well water
correlates with an individual's carotid artery showing
atherosclerosis.

People who'd consumed high-arsenic water for 30 or more years were
more than three times as likely to suffer from carotid
atherosclerosis as were people who drank contaminated water for less
than 15 years. Study participants who drank contaminated water for
similar periods were about three times as likely to have carotid
atherosclerosis if their well contained at least 0.70 milligrams of
arsenic per liter than if it contained less than 0.05 mg/l, the
researchers report in the April 16 Circulation.

Because ultrasound enabled the researchers to gauge the
cardiovascular health of each participant--rather than only of those
who had suffered strokes and other cardiovascular ills--the new
study is more powerful than previous attempts to determine arsenic's
effect on arteries, says Allan H. Smith of the University of
California, Berkeley. However, he says, follow-up studies are needed
to confirm that arsenic-induced carotid atherosclerosis leads to
cardiovascular disease.

Combined with previous studies by the Taiwanese team, the new
research "clearly shows there is a cardiovascular risk associated
with drinking arsenic-laden water," says Barchowsky. Less clear has
been the persistence of arsenic's cardiovascular effects, he adds.
Since use of arsenic-tainted wells in Taiwan ceased 2 decades before
the team collected data for its study, it appears that health
effects can persist long after exposure, he says.