Authors
Winston H Yu, Charles M Harvey, Charles F Harvey
Publication date
2003/6
Journal
Water Resources Research
Volume
39
Issue
6
Description
This paper examines the health crisis in Bangladesh due to dissolved arsenic in groundwater. First, we use geostatistical methods to construct a map of arsenic concentrations that divides Bangladesh into regions and estimate vertical concentration trends in these regions. Then, we use census data to estimate exposure distributions in the regions; we use epidemiological data from West Bengal and Taiwan to estimate dose response functions for arsenicosis and arsenic‐induced cancers; and we combine the regional exposure distributions and the dose response models to estimate the health effects of groundwater arsenic in Bangladesh. We predict that long‐term exposure to present arsenic concentrations will result in approximately 1,200,000 cases of hyperpigmentation, 600,000 cases of keratosis, 125,000 cases of skin cancer, and 3000 fatalities per year from internal cancers. Although these estimates are very …
Total citations
20032004200520062007200820092010201120122013201420152016201720182019202020212022202320241615291828232019141214219912171491147