At the crossroads: Hazard assessment and reduction of health risks from arsenic in private well waters of the northeastern United States and Atlantic Canada

Abstract

This special issue contains 12 papers that report on new understanding of arsenic hydrogeochemistry, performance of household well water treatment systems, and testing and treatment behaviors of well users in several states of the northeastern region of the United States and Nova Scotia, Canada. The responsibility to ensure water safety of private wells falls on well owners. In the U.S., 43 million Americans, mostly from rural areas, use private wells. In order to reduce As exposure in rural populations that rely on private wells for drinking water, risk assessment, which includes estimation of population at risk of exposure to As above the EPA Maximum Contaminant Level, is helpful but insufficient because it does not identify individual households at risk. Persistent optimism bias among well owners against testing and barriers such as cost of treatment mean that a large percentage of the population will not act to reduce their exposure to harmful substances such as As. If households are in areas with known As occurrence, a potentially large percentage of well owners will remain unaware of their exposure. To ensure that everyone, including vulnerable populations such as low income families with children and pregnant women, is not exposed to arsenic in their drinking water, alternative action will be required and warrants further research.

Effects of redox conditions on the control of arsenic mobility in shallow alluvial aquifers on the Venetian Plain (Italy)

“…Regardless of whether the first evidence of health problems involved West Bengal and Bangladesh (Smedley and Kinniburgh, 2013), many countries are now affected, including Western nations (Ravenscroft et al, 2009), where the population remains unaware of their exposure (Zeng and Ayotte, 2015). The health effects of acute poisoning and low chronic exposures have garnered substantial attention (EFSA, 2014;EPA, 2014;WHO, 2001).…”

MDI Biological Laboratory Arsenic Summit: Approaches to Limiting Human Exposure to Arsenic

“…Unfortunately, in the U.S., authority under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act is limited to public, not private, drinking water systems and so, a large number of people living in rural and sub-urban areas with wells remain exposed to levels greater than 10 μg/L. For example, approximately 43 million Americans drink well water and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has estimated that 3 million people in the U.S. are exposed to well water with arsenic concentrations exceeding 10 μg/L [25–27]. In addition, although public water supplies serving more than 25 people are required to provide water containing <10 μg/L of arsenic, as of 2014 about 500 rural public utilities are in violation [28].…”

“…It is imperative that new approaches be developed to rapidly and inexpensively identify arsenic levels in ground water, to remove arsenic from drinking water [15, 27, 66], or to identify alternative sources of water that are arsenic-safe. We encourage ongoing studies to develop models to predict well water arsenic concentrations based on arsenic levels in regions of similar geology [67] and an understanding of exposure pathways due to the subsurface hydrological flows [68].…”

Aromatic plants versus arsenic hazards in soils

“…Arsenic is ubiquitous element in our environment and its toxicity has become a global issue due to the increasing contamination of water, soils and crops in numerous countries like India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, China, Taiwan, United States, Vietnam, Thailand, and Europe (Pandey et al, 2011;Singh et al, 2015;Zheng and Ayotte, 2015). Arsenic poisoning causes skin lesions, cancers and other symptoms in people who live in surrounding of arsenic hazards (Dhankher, 2005;Mondal et al, 2006).…”