High levels of arsenic in well water are causing widespread poisoning in Bangladesh. In a typical aquifer in southern Bangladesh, chemical data imply that arsenic mobilization is associated with recent inflow of carbon. High concentrations of radiocarbon-young methane indicate that young carbon has driven recent biogeochemical processes, and irrigation pumping is sufficient to have drawn water ...

The incidence of high concentrations of arsenic in drinking-water has emerged as a major public-health problem. With newer-affected sites discovered during the last decade, a significant change has been observed in the global scenario of arsenic contamination, especially in Asian countries. This communication presents an overview of the current scenario of arsenic contamination in countries acr...

In 1938, Moxon discovered that arsenic protected against selenium toxicity. Since that time it has been shown that this protective effect of arsenic against selenium poisoning can be demonstrated in many different animal species under a wide variety of conditions. Antagonistic effects between arsenic and selenium have also been noted in teratologic experiments. Early metabolic studies showed th...

Exposure to toxic metals remains a widespread occupational and environmental problem in world. There have been a number of reports in the recent past suggesting an incidence of childhood lead poisoning and chronic arsenic poisoning due to contaminated drinking water in many areas of West Bengal in India and Bangladesh has become a national calamity. Low level metal exposure in humans is caused ...

The development of 2,3-dimercaptopropanol (British Anti-Lewisite, BAL) by Peters, Stocken, and Thompson (1) has made available a potent antidote for arsenical poisoning. Study of the chemical combination of arsenic with sensitive enzymes and cells indicated that the arsenic could, under certain circumstances, be removed from the cells, and that enzymes could be reactivated by the action of BAL ...

Inorganic trivalent arsenicals are vicinal thiol-reacting agents, and dithiothreitol (DTT) is a well-known dithiol agent. Interestingly, both decreasing and increasing effects of DTT on arsenic trioxide-induced apoptosis have been reported. We now provide data to show that, at high concentrations, DTT, dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), and dimercaptopropanesulfonic acid (DMPS) decreased arsenic t...

Arsenic is an important poison bot 1 or homicidal and suicidal purposes. As it is w 1 e y distributed in nature exact information a oil the amount of arsenic normally present m human tissues, excreta and foodstuns is great importance in medico-legal inves1 iga 10 When it is present in large quantity in viscera of a suspected case of arsenic poisoning, no difficulty arises in giving a defini e o...

Large alluvial deltas of the Mekong River in southern Vietnam and Cambodia and the Red River in northern Vietnam have groundwaters that are exploited for drinking water by private tube-wells, which are of increasing demand since the mid-1990s. This paper presents an overview of groundwater arsenic pollution in the Mekong delta: arsenic concentrations ranged from 1-1610 microg/L in Cambodia (ave...

Acute and chronic exposure to arsenic has been reported in several countries of the world, with major outbreaks of arsenosis occurring in Argentina, Bangladesh, India, Mexico, Thailand, and Taiwan, where a large proportion of drinking water (groundwater) is contaminated with high concentrations of arsenic. Research has also pointed to significantly higher standardized mortality rates for cancer...

This report discusses the health and socioeconomic problems that have recently emerged in the Bangladesh countryside because of arsenic contamination of the groundwater. A survey found that men in rural households are generally found to be more susceptible to arsenicosis than women. The survey also indicated that villagers with lower annual income are more likely to experience arsenicosis. Abou...