Better Life Laboratories, Inc. is a nonprofit organization. It conducts scientific research and provides technical expertise, equipment, and training to help needy people around the world.
Figure 14. The concentration of arsenic (mg/L) leached into 200 mL of distilled water from 100 grams of surface soil after 24 hours.
Arsenic readily leaches from many Bangladesh surface soils after only 24 hours of flooding.
Arsenic can be taken up by rice and other food crops.
Rice is often grown in flooded soils analogous to the conditions of this experiment, is the major staple of Bangladeshi diet, and is grown primarily for domestic consumption;
therefore, the ingestion of arsenic from domestic rice and other locally grown foods should be evaluated as a potential human exposure pathway.
If exposure to arsenic from ingesting domestic food crops is a significant risk to human health, then any factors that reduce the uptake of arsenic by these crops should be
evaluated and the drinking water standard for arsenic should be lowered to account for this additional health risk.
E-mail the President of Better Life Laboratories, Seth H. Frisbie, Ph.D. (shf3@cornell.edu).
Write us at Better Life Laboratories, 293 George Rd., East Calais, VT 05650, USA.
