Chilean study finds rates for malignancy were still high decades after clean-up
TUESDAY, June 12 (HealthDay News) -- Decades after residents of a region in northern Chile were exposed to high levels of arsenic in their drinking water, they still suffer from high lung and bladder cancer death rates, concludes a study by U.S. and Chilean researchers.
The finding indicates a pattern of long-term arsenic-related health effects that hasn't been documented before, said the authors of a study in the June 12 Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
"The results show that the risks of concentrated arsenic exposure are extraordinarily high, and that they last a very long time, both after initial exposure, and after the exposure ends," principal investigator Allan Smith, professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, said in a prepared statement....
SOURCE: University of California, Berkeley, news release, June 12, 2007