Health Effects of Exposure to Natural Arsenic in Groundwater and Coal in China: An Overview of Occurrence Guangqian Yu,1,2 Dianjun Sun,1 and Yan Zheng3,4,* 1The Center for Endemic Disease Control, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, People's Republic of China; 2State Key Lab of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang, Guizhou Province, People's Republic of China; 3Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA; 4Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, New York, USA Abstract Between 2001 and 2005, 21,155 of 445,638 wells in 20,517 villages in 292 counties in 16 provinces from China, or 5% of wells, were found to contain > 50 µg/L arsenic (As) by field testing with the Merck As kit. We achieved quality assurance of analysis of at least 10% of the wells containing > 50 µg/L As using hydride generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry and silver dithiodicarbomate spectrometry. Our best estimate of the population exposed to > 50 µg/L As in drinking water was 582,769. This is probably an underestimate for China because of the limited area surveyed. In a survey of 135,492 individuals in eight provinces, we used the National Diagnosis Standard for Endemic Arsenicosis and identified 10,096 cases of arsenicosis with various degrees of skin lesions. The arsenicosis occurrence rate of 7.5% is likely an overestimate, because the survey focused more on known and suspected endemic areas of arsenicosis. The occurrence of arsenicosis correlates positively with the percentage of wells containing > 50 µg/L As, or at a ratio of 1 to 5%. Based on both the amount of As in well water and the rate of occurrence of arsenicosis, Shanxi province, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and Jilin province are the top three areas in China as of 2005 for exposure to endemic As from drinking water. Our survey also identified exposure to high levels of As from wells in several provinces and from the indoor burning of coal containing high levels of As in Shaanxi province. These areas, however, have not had any reports of previous arsenicosis endemics. In the endemic areas, the average rate of occurrence of arsenicosis at advanced stages was 1.2%, possibly because of a long exposure time of > 20 years ; the rate of occurrence increased to 2.7% when we included a high dose of As exposure from the indoor burning of coal. Mitigation to reduce As exposure remains a challenge in rural China. Key words: arsenic, arsenicosis, China, coal, groundwater, health effect. Environ Health Perspect 115:636–642 (2006) . doi:10.1289/ehp.9268 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 9 January 2007] This article is part of the mini-monograph "Arsenic Occurrence and Health Effects in China." Address correspondence to D. Sun, The Center for Endemic Disease Control, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, Heilongjiang 150061, People's Republic of China. Telephone: 86 451 86612695. Fax: 86 451 86657674. E-mail: zdyz@ems.hrbmu.edu.cn *Guest editor for this mini-monograph: Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, NY 11367 USA ; Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964 USA. Telephone: (718) 997-3329. Fax: (718) 997-3299. E-mail: yan.zheng@qc.cuny.edu, yzheng@ldeo.columbia.edu We thank S.X. Wang, K.G. Wu, S.L. Wang, Z.M. Lu, X.Z. Hu, Y.Q. An, X.J. Yang, W.D. Li, B. Yu, L.J. Wang, Y. Yang, J.C. Bian, Q.Y. Xian, F. Ye, and R.Y. Wang for participating in this study. This work was supported by grants in China from the Ministry of Health of China and UNICEF-Beijing to the National Center for Endemic Disease Control and Prevention (CEDC) , Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) . UNICEF's Water and Environment Division in Beijing provided partial support for Dr. Zheng's sabbatical leave to guest edit this mini-monograph. In the United States, Y.Z. was funded by grant 1 P42 ES10349 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences/Superfund Basic Research Program, and grant 03-45428 from the U.S. National Science Foundation Earth Science Division. We thank the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University for partial funding through grant 7017. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 17 April 2006 ; accepted 4 October 2006. The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |