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. 2020 Mar 25:710:136071.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136071. Epub 2019 Dec 12.

Health effects of arsenic exposure in Latin America: An overview of the past eight years of research

Khalid M Khan  1 , Rishika Chakraborty  2 , Jochen Bundschuh  3 , Prosun Bhattacharya  4 , Faruque Parvez  5
Affiliations

Health effects of arsenic exposure in Latin America: An overview of the past eight years of research

Khalid M Khan et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

Studies conducted over the past eight years in Latin America (LA) have continued to produce new knowledge regarding health impacts of arsenic (As) in drinking water. We conducted a systematic review of 92 peer-reviewed English articles published between 2011 and 2018 to expand our understanding on these health effects. Majority of the LA studies on As have been conducted in Chile and Mexico. Additional data have emerged from As-exposed populations in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Uruguay. The present review has documented recent data on the biomarkers of As exposure, genetic susceptibility and genotoxicity, and risk assessment to further characterize the health effects and exposed populations. Some recent findings on the associations of As with bladder and lung cancers, reproductive outcomes, and declined cognitive performance have been consistent with what we reported in our previous systematic review article. We have found highly convincing evidence of in utero As exposure as a significant risk factor for several health outcomes, particularly for bladder cancer, even at moderate level. New data have emerged regarding the associations of As with breast and laryngeal cancers as well as type 2 diabetes. We observed early life As exposure to be associated with kidney injury, carotid intima-media thickness, and various pulmonary outcomes in children. Other childhood effects such as low birth weight, low gestational age, anemia, increased apoptosis, and decreased cognitive functions were also reported. Studies identified genetic variants of As methyltransferase that could determine susceptibility to As related health outcomes. Arsenic-induced DNA damage and alteration of gene and protein expression have also been reported. While the scope of research is still vast, the substantial work done on As exposure and its health effects in LA will help direct further large-scale studies for more comprehensive knowledge and plan appropriate mitigation strategies.

Keywords: Cancers; Cardiopulmonary outcomes; Genetic susceptibility; In utero and early life effects; Latin America; Water arsenic.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:
The Study Selection Process Note: This is a single column fitting image
Figure 2:
Figure 2:
Key findings from the previous and current review articles on health effects of arsenic in Latin America (↑) – Positive association with As; (↓) – Negative association with As; As- Arsenic; AS3MT- Arsenite methyltransferase; cIMT- Carotid intima media thickness; CVD- Cardiovascular disease; miRNA- microRNA; PBMC- Peripheral blood mononuclear cells; T2DM- Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus; 8-OHdG- 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine Note: This is a 2 column fitting image
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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