Title:
Global solutions to a silent poison
Author:
Yan Zheng, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China
Published:
Science, Volume 368, Issue 6493, pp. 818-819 (22 May 2020)
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6493/818?_ga=2.200732142.1504636663.1590382577-805674628.1576926007
Summary:
Severe public health consequences of worldwide geogenic arsenic occurrence in groundwater have been recognized since the late 1990s (1). The population affected by groundwater arsenic from domestic well supplies has been frequently stated to exceed 100 million. However, this compilation is fraught with uncertainties due to incomplete and unreliable records on domestic wells that supply drinking water and incomplete testing for arsenic. On page 845 of this issue, Podgorski and Berg use statistical models to estimate that 94 million to 220 million people, with 94% in Asia, are at risk of drinking well water containing arsenic concentrations >10 µg/liter (2). In Bangladesh, a 2009 national drinking-water quality survey found that about 20 million and 45 million people were exposed to concentrations greater than 50 and 10 µg/liter, respectively, with an arsenic-related mortality rate of 1 in every 18 adult deaths (3). This global threat demands multisector solutions.