NewYork-Presbyterian - Columbia Campus Study on Health Effects of Arsenic in Drinking Water

Inorganic arsenic, a known human carcinogen, is present in varied amounts in drinking water in many parts of the world, including the U.S. Recently, ground water in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India has been found to be contaminated with high levels of inorganic arsenic. Ground water is the only source of drinking water for 95% of the region's population. This massive public health problem, considered as the largest known mass poisoning event in human history, affects between 50 and 70 million people.

Last year, NewYork-Prebysterian - Columbia Campus received funds from the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Basic Research Program to initiate a major five-year multi-disciplinary research program to investigate the health effects and geochemical determinants of arsenic in drinking water in both the U.S. and Bangladesh. The largest study under this program, led by Dr. Habibul Ahsan, is a large-scale longitudinal epidemiologic cohort study in Bangladesh for understanding the mechanisms, and finding avenues for prevention, of the effects of inorganic arsenic from drinking water on the occurrence of cancers and precancerous conditions and also on total cancer-related mortalities. This study, which is one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject to date, is recruiting and collecting questionnaire data, blood, urine, tumor tissue and drinking water samples from 10,000 men and women living in a defined geographic area but with wide ranges of arsenic exposure. Dose-response relationships between arsenic exposure and health effects and the impact of host and environmental factors on these relationships will be examined in this study in a prospective manner.

Findings from this study will have important scientific and policy implications that are relevant not only for Bangladesh but also for the U.S. and other countries of the world facing the arsenic problem. Other NewYork-Presbyterian - Columbia Campus researchers involved in this project include, Drs. Joseph Graziano, Geoffrey Howe, Paul Brandt-Rauf, Regina Santella, Wei-Yann Tsai and Jack Longley.