Sheila Gardner and J.T. Sims. University of Delaware, 152 Townsend Hall, 152 Townsend Hall, Newark, DE 19716, United States of America
The potential human and ecological effects of soil arsenic (As) have become an increasing issue worldwide. Encroachment of residential areas onto potential contaminated sites has increased public awareness and alarm. Determining if soils contaminated with As by past industrial or agricultural activities are dangerous enough to humans (i.e., through ingestion, dermal contact, etc.) to warrant remediation is a growing issue in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. One approach to assess As bioavailability after incidental ingestion of soils is the use of physiologically based extraction tests (PBET) that use simulated gastric fluids to mimic As dissolution in the human digestive system. Bioavailability may also be controlled by the speciation of As in soils, which can be assessed using sequential extraction tests. We compared PBET extractable As with forms identified by a simple, 3-step sequential extraction method to determine if As speciation affected potential bioavailability to humans. Soils from industrial sites with concentrations ranging from 100 to 6,000 mg kg-1 As were used and compared with selected agricultural and forested locations.
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