Arsenic exposure from drinking water and staple food (rice): A field scale study in rural Bengal for assessment of human health risk

Biswas, Bratisha; Chakraborty, Arijit; Chatterjee, Debashis; Pramanik, Sreemanta; Bhaswati, Ganguli; Majumdar, Kunal Kanti; Nriagu, Jerome O.; Kulkarni, Ketki Y.; Bansiwal, Amit; Labhasetwar, Pawan; Bhowmick, Subhamoy

doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.113012

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Arsenic exposure through contaminated groundwater in Nadia district of West Bengal, India has already been well studied and documented (Bhowmick et al, 2018). As a precautionary measure, most of the villages has been provided with As free piped water since last 5-8 y. Piped water in these areas have been reported to have As concentrations in the range of 0.2 µg/L to 8.3 µg/L, which is far below the WHO permissible limit i.e 10 µg/L (Biswas et al, 2021). Hence, acute exposure through groundwater has been minimized however, the local people continue to use groundwater for cooking and other daily household purposes (Halder et al, 2014;Biswas et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Crops and cereals growing in the agricultural elds of these endemic regions are loaded with high As concentrations as reported by previous studies (Chowdhury et al, 2018;Rahaman et al, 2022). Hence, mounting evidences indicate that diet is now considered as another major source of As exposure (Biswas et al, 2021;Chowdhury et al, 2020;Halder et al, 2013). The primary source of As exposure still remains obscure as few studies have reported that drinking As contaminated water could be the major source of exposure despite consuming of As contaminated foodstuffs (Chung et al, 2014; van Geen and Duxbury, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Concentration of As detected in stool samples is comparable to that in respective urine samples in majority of the subjects irrespective of their enrolment as case or control. Thus, the low As content in drinking water juxtaposed with the relatively high concentration of urinary As in cases suggests that the populations in As affected areas continue to be exposed to As through diet (Biswas et al, 2021).…”

Section: Arsenic Concentration In Urine and Stool Samplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Acidifed urine and groundwater samples were thawed to room temperature and lter sterilized through 0.2µ PTFE membrane lters (Whatmann). The samples were further diluted and prepared following the methodology mentioned in Biswas et al (2021) and analysed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS, Perkin Elmer, NexION 300X) available in CSIR-NEERI, Nagpur.…”

Section: Sample Preparation and As Estimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In case of drinking water and urine analysis, drinking water SRM (NIST SRM 1640a) and spiked urine samples were used for quality assurance. The detailed quality control procedure adopted has been described in our previous report (Biswas et al, 2021).…”

Section: Quality Control and Assurancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Stool as a novel biomarker for arsenic exposure through diet: a case-control study in a West Bengal population

Ghosh,

Chakraborty,

Bhowmick

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Geogenic groundwater arsenic (As) contamination is a persistent health threat in the district of Nadia, West Bengal India. Despite provision of safe piped water, local populations in these areas are still exposed to As through diet as the cultivation is majorly dependent on As contaminated shallow groundwater causing significant As accumulation in agricultural foodstuffs. Although urine is an established biomarker for As exposure through drinking water yet, it does not reflect the actual exposure through diet. Hence, stool-As concentration of exposed population should be evaluated to assess the true exposure through diet. The present case-control study evaluates As concentration in stool samples of exposed (n = 24) and unexposed (n = 36) populations. Average stool-As concentration found was 234 ± 207 µg/kg in exposed population while only 66 ± 22 µg/kg in control samples; comparable to those of urine samples of case and control; respectively. Positive Pearson correlation and a significant difference of variance through ANOVA (p = 0.01; Fcrit= 1.65) among stool-As, urine-As, groundwater-As, age and BMI found for case samples indicate that stool also presents comparable and measurable As concentrations upon exposure. Mann-Whitney U test confirms that random values of stool-As in case samples varied significantly (p < 0.001) than those of control samples. Besides, multi-metal analysis of stool digest indicated that stool-As correlated negatively with most of the metals in case and positively with control samples. These observations along with ease of collection and detection due to higher concentration in the matrix, suggest that stool may act as a decisive biomarker of As exposure through diet. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering study to establish stool as a reliable and significant biomarker for assessing As exposure as limited investigations exist focused on human faecal samples on long term naturally exposed adult human population.

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