Role and nature of organic matter in the mobilization of arsenic in shallow aquifers in Taiwan

摘要

Exposure to high levels (>10 μg/L) of the geogenic poison, arsenic (As), in drinking waters consumed by over a hundred million people across the globe (Ravenscroft et al., 2009), is considered to have caused the biggest mass poisoning in human history (Smith et al., 2000), affecting the health of millions of people and the death of thousands. Taiwan is one of the heavily affected areas where in both the SW (Tseng et al., 1968) and NE (Hsu et al., 1997), high levels (>10 μg/L) of As in groundwaters have been documented. Drinking highly contaminated groundwaters from boreholes at these sites caused skin, lung, bladder, liver and kidney cancers as well as skin lesions and a peripheral vascular disease known as the blackfoot disease (BFD), which is very unique to Taiwan (Lamm et al., 2006) specifically to the SW Taiwan and not to the NW coast (Tseng, 2005).