Arsenic Alert
Poisoned well water -- the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Arsenic is a well known poison most know about from murder mysteries [eg Arsenic and Old Lace]. In high concentrations it is acutely quite lethal. But chronic lower doses cause many manifestations of chronic diseases - many cancers, joint pain, skin lesions, diabetes, high blood pressure, renal disease, heart failure - that lead to a slow painful death. And it is neurotoxin, especially in developing infants and children. Pregnancy losses are common.
Bangladesh: NGOs gone wrong
Western cultural ‘do-gooders’ descended upon Bangladesh in the eighties and nineties, with the great idea to eradicate their seasonal outbreaks of diarrheal infections. Since the coliform bacteria contaminated surface waters (due to outside defecation) just need to dig shallow wells and bring up water from the rock phase aquifers.
These waters came from the Himalayas, but unbeknownst to the ‘do-gooders’, mountain streams pulled arsenates from the surrounding rocks and dissolved them into the aquifer. By the time it reached the Bengali marsh deltas, the water’s arsenic was concentrated to toxic levels.
So therefore, while in the process of trying to reduce exposure to diarrheal disease-causing coliform bacteria, these ‘social engineering organizations’ instead launched a a long-acting poison onto forty+ million people, reaching across all generations. A horrendous human tragedy.
Beware unintended consequences.
But it is not just in Bangladesh, not just from rock leaching into aquifers. Here in the USA we used arsenic as a pesticide in CCA (chromated, copper, arsenated) pressure treated lumber for many years until it was regulated in 2003. That wood releases its arsenic into the air when sawed/burned and into the ground water when in contact long term. Be aware of this risk when doing any construction work in stuctures made in the past millenium.
Plants grown in arsenic containing dirt can accumulate it. Apple juice, baby food, and rice were found to have levels exceeding the threshold for safe dietary intake of arsenic. So plants grown near CCA-treated wood could accumulate too. Note that as the water, soil, or compost in contact with the CCA-treated wood becomes more acidic, the amounts of As, Cr, and Cu leached from the wood will increase. A very small percentage of the metals in CCA-treated wood is lost to neutral water but in very acidic environments (pH 3-4) losses can be very high (50-100%).
Arsenic induced diabetes: Mechanism of Action
One of the known consequences of chronic arsenic ingestion is the development of diabetes mellitus. New research uncovered a biological mechanism that leads to insulin resistance and glucose intolerance. Arsenic exposure results in the prolonged and uncontrolled activation of NRF2 (nuclear factor-erythroid related factor 2) a driver of cancer progression. Prolonged NRF2 activation caused shifts in pathways that control amino acid, fatty acid, carbohydrate, lipid and drug metabolism. Glucose production from the liver floods the bloodstream, leading to insulin resistance.
Low tech well water arsenic purification inventions
However the best way to deal with arsenic toxicity is to prevent exposure to it. Water management engineers seized the day and tackled the problem, coming up with various clever and cost effective solutions. Best ones to date are:
SONO filtration system based on a composite-iron matrix.
A community water-treatment system based on activated alumina.
PUR technology, which uses calcium hypochlorite (bleach) to kill a wide range of microbial pathogens and ferric sulfate to remove arsenic through flocculation-precipitation.
The SONO filter removes all three Ar species inexpensively, without chemical pretreatment, without regeneration, without producing toxic wastes, and in the presence of high-soluble iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphate, silicate, and other potentially interfering chemical species. It is a two-stage, pour- collect filtration system. The top bucket contains the arsenic-scavenging composite-iron matrix (CIM) sandwiched between two layers of sand. The bottom bucket is a simple sand and charcoal filter that cleans the water of residual iron and other impurities that may have drained from the first bucket.
Now let’s get this out there across the world where it is desperately needed.
And no more ‘unintended’ surprises, please.
REFERENCES
The Poisoning of Bangladesh: How Arsenic Is Ravaging a Nation https://undark.org/2017/08/16/bangladesh-arsenic-poisoning-drinking-water/
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/CCA-Treated_Wood_Factsheet.pdf
http://npic.orst.edu/ingred/ptype/treatwood/ccareg.html
https://extension.psu.edu/environmental-soil-issues-garden-use-of-treated-lumber
Study uncovers new link between long-term arsenic exposure and Type 2 diabetes (2021, September 15) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-09-uncovers- link-long-term-arsenic-exposure.html
Pengfei Liu et al, Non-canonical NRF2 activation promotes a pro-diabetic shift in hepatic glucose metabolism, Molecular Metabolism (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.molmet.2021.101243
A Hussam, et al. 2008 Arsenic Filters for Groundwater in Bangladesh: Toward a Sustainable Solution A simple filtration system used in Bangladesh and other countries removes dangerous arsenic from drinking water. The Bridge vol 38no3 http://www.nae.edu/TheBridge
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