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      Spatial Analysis of Human Health Risk Due to Arsenic Exposure through Drinking Groundwater in Taiwan’s Pingtung Plain

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          Abstract

          Chronic arsenic (As) exposure continues to be a public health problem of major concern worldwide, affecting hundreds of millions of people. A long-term groundwater quality survey has revealed that 20% of the groundwater in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung Plain is clearly contaminated with a measured As concentration in excess of the maximum level of 10 µg/L recommended by the World Health Organization. The situation is further complicated by the fact that more than half of the inhabitants in this area continue to use groundwater for drinking. Efforts to assess the health risk associated with the ingestion of As from the contaminated drinking water are required in order to determine the priorities for health risk management. The conventional approach to conducting a human health risk assessment may be insufficient for this purpose, so this study adopts a geostatistical Kriging method to perform a spatial analysis of the health risk associated with ingesting As through drinking groundwater in the Pingtung Plain. The health risk is assessed based on the hazard quotient (HQ) and target cancer risk (TR) established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The results show that most areas where the HQ exceeds 1 are in the southwestern part of the study area. In addition, the high-population density townships of Daliao, Linyuan, Donggang, Linbian, Jiadong, and Fangliao presently have exceedingly high TR values that are two orders of magnitude higher than the acceptable standard. Thus, the use of groundwater for drinking in these townships should be strictly avoided. A map that delineates areas with high TR values and high population densities is provided. The findings broaden the scope of the spatial analysis of human health risk and provide a basis for improving the decision-making process.

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          Most cited references37

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          Arsenic contamination of groundwater and drinking water in Vietnam: a human health threat.

          This is the first publication on arsenic contamination of the Red River alluvial tract in the city of Hanoi and in the surrounding rural districts. Due to naturally occurring organic matter in the sediments, the groundwaters are anoxic and rich in iron. With an average arsenic concentration of 159 micrograms/L, the contamination levels varied from 1 to 3050 micrograms/L in rural groundwater samples from private small-scale tubewells. In a highly affected rural area, the groundwater used directly as drinking water had an average concentration of 430 micrograms/L. Analysis of raw groundwater pumped from the lower aquifer for the Hanoi water supply yielded arsenic levels of 240-320 micrograms/L in three of eight treatment plants and 37-82 micrograms/L in another five plants. Aeration and sand filtration that are applied in the treatment plants for iron removal lowered the arsenic concentrations to levels of 25-91 micrograms/L, but 50% remained above the Vietnamese Standard of 50 micrograms/L. Extracts of sediment samples from five bore cores showed a correlation of arsenic and iron contents (r2 = 0.700, n = 64). The arsenic in the sediments may be associated with iron oxyhydroxides and released to the groundwater by reductive dissolution of iron. Oxidation of sulfide phases could also release arsenic to the groundwater, but sulfur concentrations in sediments were below 1 mg/g. The high arsenic concentrations found in the tubewells (48% above 50 micrograms/L and 20% above 150 micrograms/L) indicate that several million people consuming untreated groundwater might be at a considerable risk of chronic arsenic poisoning.
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            Malignant neoplasms among residents of a blackfoot disease-endemic area in Taiwan: high-arsenic artesian well water and cancers.

            The objective of this study is to elucidate the association between high-arsenic artesian well water and cancers in endemic area of blackfoot disease, a unique peripheral vascular disease related to continuous arsenic exposure. As compared with the general population in Taiwan, both the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) and cumulative mortality rate were significantly high in blackfoot disease-endemic areas for cancers of bladder, kidney, skin, lung, liver, and colon. The SMRs for cancers of bladder, kidney, skin, lung, liver, and colon were 1100, 772, 534, 320, 170, and 160, respectively, for males, and 2009, 1119, 652, 413, 229, and 168, respectively, for females. A dose-response relationship was observed between SMRs of the cancers and blackfoot disease prevalence rate of the villages and townships in the endemic areas. SMRs of cancers were greater in villages where only artesian wells were used as the drinking water source than in villages using both artesian and shallow wells, and even greater than in villages using shallow wells only.
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              Prevalence of skin cancer in an endemic area of chronic arsenicism in Taiwan.

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                Int J Environ Res Public Health
                Int J Environ Res Public Health
                ijerph
                International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
                MDPI
                1661-7827
                1660-4601
                14 January 2017
                January 2017
                : 14
                : 1
                : 81
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Nursing, Fooyin University, Kaohsiung 831, Taiwan; sc048@ 123456fy.edu.tw
                [2 ]Department of Environmental Engineering and Science, Fooyin University, Kaohsiung 831, Taiwan; pl036@ 123456fy.edu.tw
                [3 ]Department of Leisure and Recreation Management, Kainan University, Taoyuan 338, Taiwan; csjang@ 123456mail.knu.edu.tw
                [4 ]Graduate Institute of Applied Geology, National Central University, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan; fafa7250@ 123456yahoo.com.tw
                Author notes
                [* ]Correspondence: jschen@ 123456geo.ncu.edu.tw ; Tel.: +886-3-280-7427; Fax: +886-3-426-3127
                Article
                ijerph-14-00081
                10.3390/ijerph14010081
                5295332
                28098817
                2ecf5c66-5af8-41ec-ac60-e64910d1b30c
                © 2017 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

                This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                : 28 October 2016
                : 10 January 2017
                Categories
                Article

                Public health
                health risk,arsenic,spatial analysis,hazard quotient,target risk,kriging method
                Public health
                health risk, arsenic, spatial analysis, hazard quotient, target risk, kriging method

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