Arsenic Contamination of Groundwater Is Determined by Complex Interactions Between Various Chemical and Biological Processes

Overview

Journal Toxics

Date 2024 Jan 26

PMID 38276724

Authors

Zahid Hassan

Hans V Westerhoff

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

At a great many locations worldwide, the safety of drinking water is not assured due to pollution with arsenic. Arsenic toxicity is a matter of both systems chemistry and systems biology: it is determined by complex and intertwined networks of chemical reactions in the inanimate environment, in microbes in that environment, and in the human body. We here review what is known about these networks and their interconnections. We then discuss how consideration of the systems aspects of arsenic levels in groundwater may open up new avenues towards the realization of safer drinking water. Along such avenues, both geochemical and microbiological conditions can optimize groundwater microbial ecology vis-à-vis reduced arsenic toxicity.

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