sources after decades of Western aid directed the construction of tube wells that tapped directly into arsenic-tainted water reservoirs.29 Because of this, Bangladesh has 27 million people drinking from sources that contain greater than 50 ppb of arsenic, while West Bengal and a few other areas of India have a combined 11 million people exposed to carcinogenic levels of arsenic-tainted drinking water.
An astounding 80 million people in this region drink water containing more than 10 ppb of arsenic. Bangladesh is considered the “biggest arsenic catastrophe in the world,”30 where fifty-nine out of sixty-four districts are affected, and more than half the total population is at risk of arsenic contamination. This repeated exposure to arsenic is known as arsenicosis, which is typically diagnosed via visible skin lesions, although symptoms can also include dehydration, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, dark urine, delirium, vertigo, shock, and eventually death.
A study carried out in Bangladesh also confirmed a link between high arsenic exposure and anemia, a condition in which a person lacks healthy red blood cells and suffers from inadequate oxygen delivery to the body’s cells and tissues.31
Other parts of the world face significant arsenic levels in drinking water as well. Another 5.6 million people in China and an astonishing 3 million in the United States also drink water that’s heavily contaminated with arsenic. Several millions more across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Region, Russia, the Middle East, South America, and other pockets of the world are exposed to arsenic in their drinking water.32
While lakes, streams, and groundwater remain unregulated for arsenic, the EPA has limited public drinking water sources to 10 ppb. Despite this, several thousand water districts across the United States continue to contain dangerously high levels of arsenic.
Arsenic in the food chain and biosphere
Arsenic has thoroughly contaminated our food chain and the environment. Chronic exposure to arsenic compounds in food—even in low doses over time—has been definitively linked with the development of cancers, especially in the skin, liver, bladder, and lungs.33
The ability of inorganic arsenic to destroy and kill has also made it an important and widespread element in a cocktail of pesticides as well as an important wood preservative that doubles as an insecticide. As a result of the widespread use of agricultural and industrial arsenic compounds, arsenic has entered the soil and our surrounding environment at nearly every conceivable point—ultimately tainting the world’s food supply.
In addition to organic arsenic compounds that are frequently found in small amounts in many foods, a number of inorganic arsenic varieties have contaminated production crops that feed America and the world. The real sources of concern are those accumulated from widespread pesticide and fertilizer use, runoff from industrial production, and—a factor of greater importance than most people realize —from pressure-treated wood.
Arsenic as a pesticide
Before the development of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), lead arsenate—a deadly cocktail of the heavy metals lead and arsenic—was one of the most widely used pesticides, dominating agriculture in the first half of the twentieth century. Along with other arsenic-based pesticides like calcium arsenate and “Paris Green,” arsenic was used to control moths and other pests, especially in apple orchards and other fruit trees as well as cotton crops—despite the fact health concerns over arsenic residues had been officially acknowledged as far back as 1919.34 Other inorganic varieties and a few organic varieties of arsenic were used for mosquito control and as insecticides, rodenticides, and herbicides sprayed on everything from curbs to sidewalks to road perimeters.
In addition to pesticide applications, a number of phosphate and micronutrient fertilizers—even those meant for organic food production—have been found to contain elevated arsenic and heavy metal levels, further contaminating many soils.35
The EPA’s first comprehensive report on arsenic pesticides in 1972 listed numerous compounds and their known uses and hazards.36 They include lead arsenate, “Paris Green,” calcium arsenate, basic copper arsenate, ammonium arsenate, arsenic acid, arsenic pentoxide, arsenic trioxide, sodium pyroarsenate, sodium arsenate, and potassium arsenate, as well as several harmful “arsenic-containing organic compounds used in formulating pesticides,” including cacodylic acid—just to name a few.
According to the EPA, although DDT replaced much of the use of lead arsenate in the post-war period, that later reversed after federal regulations severely limited the use of DDT and other organochlorine insecticides. Subsequently, the use of some arsenicals as pesticide resumed by the late 1960s. By 1969, annual production of arsenic trioxide had increased to 66,000 tons. Meanwhile, more than 4 million pounds of lead arsenate and some 2 million pounds of calcium arsenate were also produced for industrial purposes.
These varieties of pesticides were useful in controlling moths, beetles, and other pests, particularly in orchards during the period spanning from 1890 to 1940, where lead arsenate was sprayed directly onto fruits, including apples, apricots, cherries, peaches, pears, plums, prunes, nectarines, quinces, and grapes.
Calcium arsenate was also frequently used as a pesticide on a wide range of agriculture crops, including asparagus, beans, blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, collards, corn, cucumbers, dewberries, eggplant, kale, kohlrabi, loganberries, melons, peppers, pumpkins, raspberries, rutabagas, spinach, and squash—until the EPA canceled registration for its use in 1988. The registration was canceled after it was found that these pesticides posed “cancer risks to workers and acute toxicity to the general public.”37
Not only were edible crops treated with calcium arsenate, but cotton crops spanning millions of acres in states including Texas and Oklahoma were annually sprayed with arsenic acid, leaving soils contaminated at levels that measured as high as 830 ppm.38
According to the EPA, many farmers who had been interviewed claimed their orchard trees lived shorter lives and that their fields were unsuitable for various forage crops typically grown during alternating years, giving support to the case for the negative effects presented by widespread arsenic soil contamination. The heaviest scheduled uses were in repelling Syneta beetles in apricots, peaches, and quince. Five to six pounds of arsenic-laced pesticide were used per 100 gallons of water, a mixture used on these crops for decades. Grapes were also subjected to some of the heaviest doses of arsenic, with sodium arsenate fungicide registered for use at an average rate of 3 to 9 pounds per acre in an effort to stop black measles and crown gall.
While arsenic pesticides have been found to metabolize into secondary forms with the aid of microorganisms, researchers have discovered that about 20 percent of the toxins remained in the soil in their original form decades later, even on fields that received only a single topical soil application. Researchers also found that 55 percent of croplands sprayed with pesticides containing arsenic trioxide back in the 1950s were irreversibly leaching into both groundwater and soils over time.39
Thus, repeated and widespread applications of lead arsenate and other pesticides have contributed to significant accumulations of lead and arsenic in soils, and these toxins can still be found even decades after their use declined or was banned, with horrible health implications that continue to this day.40
Ken Rudo, who has worked as the state toxicologist for North Carolina’s Division of Public Health for more than twenty-four years, confirmed that arsenic compounds bind tightly to the soil, presenting a multitude of potential issues. “These chemicals have just tremendously long half-lives in the ground,” Rudo stated in an EPA report.41 The extensive spread of lead arsenate has made remediation of soils difficult, particularly as arsenic moves to the subsoil layers much more quickly and
