Rice is a major exposure route for arsenic in Chakdaha block,Nadia district,West Bengal,India: A probabilistic risk assessment

The importance or otherwise of rice as an exposure pathway for As ingestion by people living in Bengal and other areas impacted by hazardous As-bearing groundwaters is currently a matter of some debate. Here this issue is addressed by determining the overall increased cancer risk due to ingestion of rice in an As-impacted district of West Bengal. Human target cancer health risks have been estimated through the intake of As-bearing rice by using combined field, laboratory and computational methods. Monte Carlo simulations were run following fitting of model probability curves to measured distributions of (i) As concentration in rice and drinking water and (ii) inorganic As content of rice and fitting distributions to published data on (i) ingestion rates and (ii) body weight and point estimates on bioconcentration factors, exposure duration and other input variables. The distribution of As in drinking water was found to be substantially lower than that reported by previous authors for As in tube wells in the same area, indicating that the use of tube well water as a proxy for drinking water is likely to result in human health risks being somewhat overestimated. The calculated median increased lifetime cancer risk due to cooked rice intake was 7.62 × 10⁻⁴, higher than the 10⁻⁴–10⁻⁶ range typically used by the USEPA as a threshold to guide determination of regulatory values and similar to the equivalent risk from water intake. The median total risk from combined rice and water intake was 1.48 × 10⁻³. The contributions to this median risk from drinking water, rice and cooking of rice were found to be 48%, 44% and 8%, respectively. Thus, rice is a major potential source of As exposure in the As-affected study areas in West Bengal and the most important exposure pathway for groups exposed to low or no As in drinking water.     

Geochemistry and mineralogy of arsenic in (natural) anaerobic groundwaters

Here new data from field bioremediation experiments and geochemical modeling are reported to illustrate the principal geochemical behavior of As in anaerobic groundwaters. In the field bioremediation experiments, groundwater in Holocene alluvial aquifers in Bangladesh was amended with labile water-soluble organic C (molasses) and MgSO₄ to stimulate metabolism of indigenous SO₄-reducing bacteria (SRB). In the USA, the groundwater was contaminated by Zn, Cd and SO₄, and contained <10 μg/L As under oxidized conditions, and a mixture of sucrose and methanol were injected to stimulate SRB metabolism. In Bangladesh, groundwater was under moderately reducing conditions and contained ∼10 mg/L Fe and ∼100 μg/L As. In the USA experiment, groundwater rapidly became anaerobic, and dissolved Fe and As increased dramatically (As > 1000 μg/L) under geochemical conditions consistent with bacterial Fe-reducing conditions. With time, groundwater became more reducing and biogenic SO₄ reduction began, and Cd and Zn were virtually completely removed due to precipitation of sphalerite (ZnS) and other metal sulfide mineral(s). Following precipitation of chalcophile elements Zn and Cd, the concentrations of Fe and As both began to decrease in groundwater, presumably due to formation of As-bearing FeS/FeS₂. By the end of the six-month experiment, dissolved As had returned to below background levels. In the initial Bangladesh experiment, As decreased to virtually zero once biogenic SO₄ reduction commenced but increased to pre-experiment level once SO₄ reduction ended. In the ongoing experiment, both SO₄ and Fe(II) were amended to groundwater to evaluate if FeS/FeS₂ formation causes longer-lived As removal. Because As-bearing pyrite is the common product of SRB metabolism in Holocene alluvial aquifers in both the USA and Southeast Asia, it was endeavored to derive thermodynamic data for arsenian pyrite to better predict geochemical processes in naturally reducing groundwaters. Including the new data for arsenian pyrite into Geochemist’s Workbench, its stability field completely dominates in reducing Eh–pH space and “displaces” other As-sulfides (orpiment, realgar) that have been implied to be important in previous modeling exercises and reported in rare field conditions.     

Considerations for conducting incubations to study the mechanisms of As release in reducing groundwater aquifers

Microbial Fe reduction is widely believed to be the primary mechanism of As release from aquifer sands in Bangladesh, but alternative explanations have been proposed. Long-term incubation studies using natural aquifer material are one way to address such divergent views. This study addresses two issues related to this approach: (1) the need for suitable abiotic controls and (2) the spatial variability of the composition of aquifer sands. Four sterilization techniques were examined using orange-colored Pleistocene sediment from Bangladesh and artificial groundwater over 8 months. Acetate (10 mM) was added to sacrificial vials before sterilization using either (1) 25 kGy of gamma irradiation, (2) three 1-h autoclave cycles, (3) a single addition of an antibiotic mixture at 1× or (4) 10× the typical dose, and (5) a 10 mM addition of azide. The effectiveness of sterilization was evaluated using two indicators of microbial Fe reduction, changes in diffuse spectral reflectance and leachable Fe(II)/Fe ratios, as well as changes in P-extractable As concentrations in the solid phase. A low dose of antibiotics was ineffective after 70 days, whereas autoclaving significantly altered groundwater composition. Gamma irradiation, a high dose of antibiotics, and azide were effective for the duration of the experiment.     

Radon transfer from groundwater used in showers to indoor air

Estimation of Rn transfer from water to indoor air based on multi-day measurements may underestimate alpha exposure that occurs at short time scales in confined spaces, such as from showering, in houses with high Rn activities in the water supply. In order to examine one such incremental increase in exposure, variations in Rn in water and indoor air in 18 houses with private wells in western North Carolina (USA) were investigated. Radon in well water ranged from 158 to 811 Bq L⁻¹ (median 239 Bq L⁻¹). After 20-min showers in bathrooms with closed doors, peak Rn in air increases (above background) ranged from 71 to 4420 Bq m⁻³ (median 1170 Bq m⁻³). Calculated transfer coefficients at the scale of a 40-min closed bathroom (20-min shower plus 20 min post-shower) are described by a lognormal distribution whose geometric mean exceeds the widely-used ∼10⁻⁴ whole-house transfer coefficient by about one order of magnitude. As short-lived decay products grow from shower-derived Rn, short-term alpha energy exposure occurs in bathrooms in addition to the exposure caused by Rn mixed throughout the volume of the house. Due to the increasing ratio of Rn decay products to Rn, alpha energy exposure is greatest several minutes after the shower is turned off. For a 7.2-min shower with 10 min of additional exposure before opening the door, a geometric mean 5.6% increase in exposure over the ∼10⁻⁴ whole-house transfer coefficient derived from longer measurement periods was estimated. In addition to Rn activity in water, short-term shower exposure to Rn progeny depends on exposure time, ventilation, attachment and deposition, among other variable factors that characterize individual houses and residents.     

Modeling households’ decisions on reconstruction of houses damaged by earthquakes––Japanese case study

In this study, households’ decisions on reconstruction of damaged houses were modeled, using questionnaire data in Japan. Characteristics of households’ decisions were investigated using parameter estimation results. The effects of subsidizing policy were evaluated as follows. First, subsidy for rebuilding may be effective for the households whose houses were heavily damaged. Second, there is a possibility that subsidy accelerated rebuilding of houses by the households having children. Third, subsidy for rebuilding may not be effective for elderly people’s households and households in depopulated areas.     

Flood hazard delineation combining geomorphological and hydrological methods: an example in the Northern Iberian Peninsula

Flood mapping requires the combination and integration of geomorphological and hydrological-hydraulic methods; however, despite this, there is very little scientific literature that compares and validates both methods. Two types of analysis are addressed in the present article. On the one hand, maps of flood plains have been elaborated using geomorphological evidence and historical flood data in the mountainous area of northwestern Spain, covering an area of more then 232 km² of floodplains. On the other hand, a hydrometeorological model has been developed (Clark semidistributed unit hydrograph) in the Sarria River basin (155 km², NW Spain). This basin is not gauged, hence the model was subjected to a goodness-of-fit test of its parameter (curve number) by means of Monte Carlo simulation. The peak flows obtained by means of the hydrological model were used for hydraulic modeling (one-phase, one-dimensional and steady flow) in a 4 km² urban stretch of the river bed. The delineation of surface areas affected by floods since 1918, as well as those analyzed subsequent to the geomorphological study, reveals a high degree of reliability in the delineation of the flooded areas with frequent recurrence intervals (<50 years). If we compare these flooded surface areas with the estimate obtained by the hydrological-hydraulic method we can see that the latter method overestimates the extent of the surface water by 144% for very frequent recurrence intervals (>10 years) and underestimates it as the recurrence interval increases, by up to 80% less floodplain for exceptional events (>500 years). Finally, a management map is put forth combining the most reliable results available by integrating both methods. Originally presented at the Sixth International Conference on Geomorphology.