Meagher Laboratory Arsenic Sources

Arsenic contamination has many industrial sources and arsenic compounds were once used heavily as an agricultural pesticide. However, bore wells used primarily for rice farming in India and Bangladesh have become the greatest danger to human health. It is estimated that 400 million people in these countries are drinking water with unsafe levels of arsenic and hundreds of thousands have suffered from leasions and cancers due to contacting high concentrations that have built up in surface soils in farm lands.

The US EPA recently asked 10 million Americans in the Southwest and Southcentral US to use bottled water due to unsafe levels of arsenic in drinking water.

There are many anthropomorphic and geochemical sources of arsenic entering the environment, although bore wells account for the enormous scale of arsenic contamination in India and Bangladesh
Arsenic contamination has many industrial sources and arsenic compounds were once used heavily as an agricultural pesticide. However, bore wells used primarily for rice farming in India and Bangladesh have become the greatest danger to human health. It is estimated that 400 million people in these countries are drinking water with unsafe levels of arsenic and hundreds of thousands have suffered from leasions and cancers due to contacting high concentrations that have built up in surface soils in farm lands. The US EPA recently asked 10 million Americans in the Southwest and Southcentral US to use bottled water due to unsafe levels of arsenic in drinking water.
Also see: http://co.water.usgs.gov/trace/arsenic