Arsenic in Your Well Water? Lung Cancer May Be Next
How scary is this? Mice exposed to low levels of arsenic -- the amounts some of us may have in our ground water -- developed lung cancer. According to newswise.com, mice exposed to low doses of arsenic in drinking water, similar to what some people might consume, developed this cancer, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found. Arsenic levels in public drinking water cannot exceed 10 parts per billion (ppb), which is the standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. However, there are no established standards for private wells, from which millions of people get their drinking water. People in the northern suburbs of my town have discovered, to their horror, that their well water contains many things it shouldn't. Including arsenic. The researchers used a model that duplicates how humans are exposed to arsenic throughout their entire lifetime. In the study, the mice were given arsenic three weeks before breeding and throughout pregnanc