20 million Chinese people can poison arsenic

Swiss and Chinese scientists warned on August 22 that nearly 20 million people across China are facing the risk of poisoning by using arsenic-contaminated groundwater.

Areas with high risk of arsenic poisoning are Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Henan, Shandong and Jiangsu Province.

Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Fisheries Science and Technology EAWAG and Chinese Medical University in Shenyang estimate natural arsenic concentrations measured in more than 580,000 km ² of territory, mainly in regions The above provinces and some provinces in northern China and central Sichuan province are all higher than the World Health Organization (WHO) threshold.

The problem of water pollution in China.(Photo: Internet)

Since the 1960s, groundwater sources in some Chinese provinces have been found to be contaminated. In 1994, the Chinese government declared arsenic poisoning to be a plague and conducted a large inspection program to sample well water.

From 2001 to 2005, about 20,000 samples of well water, ie 5% of 445,000 wells were tested, showed arsenic levels higher than 50 micrograms / liter, more than five times the WHO permitted threshold. In 2004, China estimated about 14 million people were at risk of arsenic poisoning.

Annette Johnson, a geochemist at EAWAG, said arsenic poisoning due to contaminated drinking water is a major health problem. 5-10 years of exposure to the most common inorganic contaminants found in this worldwide drinking water will increase skin pigmentation, leading to liver and kidney dysfunction, increasing the chances of getting Different types of cancer.

However, adverse effects also depend on factors such as age, nutritional status and general health of infected people.