A mass-balance model to assess arsenic exposure from multiple wells in Bangladesh
Name
nihms-1740281.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.13 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b5b7ba75f07b33e695bbb6a7d5048dc5
Author(s)
Huhmann, Linden B
Harvey, Charles F
Navas-Acien, Ana
Graziano, Joseph
Slavkovich, Vesna
Chen, Yu
Argos, Maria
Ahsan, Habibul
van Geen, Alexander
Date Issued
2022
Journal
Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Huhmann, Linden B, Harvey, Charles F, Navas-Acien, Ana, Graziano, Joseph, Slavkovich, Vesna et al. 2022. "A mass-balance model to assess arsenic exposure from multiple wells in Bangladesh." Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, 32 (3).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Water arsenic (As) sources beyond a rural household's primary well may be a significant source for certain individuals, including schoolchildren and men working elsewhere. OBJECTIVE: To improve exposure assessment by estimating the fraction of drinking water that comes from wells other than the household's primary well in a densely populated area. METHODS: We use well water and urinary As data collected in 2000-2001 within a 25 km2 area of Araihazar upazila, Bangladesh, for 11,197 participants in the Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS). We estimate the fraction of water that participants drink from different wells by imposing a long-term mass-balance constraint for both As and water. RESULTS: The mass-balance model suggest that, on average, HEALS participants obtain 60-75% of their drinking water from their primary household wells and 25-40% from other wells, in addition to water from food and cellular respiration. Because of this newly quantified contribution from other wells, As in drinking water rather than rice was identified as the largest source of As exposure at baseline for HEALS participants with a primary household well containing ≤50 µg/L As. SIGNIFICANCE: Dose-response relationships for As based on water As should take into account other wells. The mass-balance approach could be applied to study other toxicants.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41370-021-00387-5
