Harvesting the Potential of BIOMASS

Evidence for elevated arsenic concentrations in groundwater of geologic origin in aquifers of fluvial and deltaic river delta formations has been increasing over the past 20 years worldwide (Smedley and Kinniburgh 2002). Although the calamity of arsenic (As) exposure in Bangladesh may have been the most well-known endemic because of the magnitude of the exposure (British Geological Survey and Department of Public Health Engineering of Bangladesh 2001; Zheng et al. 2004), many other regions in the world, including China, have well-documented As endemics with high occurrence rates of arsenicosis. This documentation has been possible because these regions have longer histories of exposure (Wang and Huang 1994). Consequently, biomedical investigations of the health effects of As began in the 1980s, but these studies were rarely published in English. This represents a loss of opportunities in raising the awareness of the health problems related to As exposure in China and in reducing the exposure that has already led to human suffering. To this end, this mini-monograph, " Occurrence and Health Effects of Arsenic in China, " includes five articles that report the health effects of As in the exposed population and describe the mitigation approach used to reduce As exposure. Elevated As in groundwater used as drinking water has been reported in the Xinjiang Other routes of As exposure are food and air contaminated by As via domestic coal combustion, for example, when chili peppers and corns are dried over open stoves burning coal containing As in Guizhou province (Belkin et al. 1997; Finkelman et al. 1999, 2003; Zheng et al. 1999). The population exposed to As has been difficult to estimate , partly because as the exposure increases over time, so does the population. The total population in the aforementioned regions with endemic arsenicosis has been estimated from approximately 0.5 million (Jin et al. 2003) to as high as approximately 2 million in the mid-1990s (Cao 1996; Peterson et al. 2001), an estimate difficult to confirm. Approximately 200,000 people in Guizhou were reported to reside in the area at risk of exposure to milligram levels of As through the food and air contaminated by the burning of coal (Liu et al. 2002). Perhaps because of the lack of resources in screening As in groundwater in vast regions of northern China and analyzing As and other contaminants in coal-bearing regions in central China, regions with problems of As exposure are often identified …