As if being involved in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centers wasn't horrific enough, it's now appearing as if people present at the WTC on that world-changing day have higher than normal rates of lymphatic and blood cancers, as reported on our sister site, That's Fit. This comes as a particularly harsh blow, since it's also been shown that 70% of this group also suffers from respiratory illnesses. But the true impact of this correlation won't be evident for years to come, when the disease may become present in many not currently affected.

I can't help but be reminded of the aftermath of the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII, when what was at first a tragedy of epic proportions was made by the realization that people would continue to suffer the effects for many years to come.

The world is such a cruel, unfair place sometimes.

University of California and Chilean researchers study results report children exposed to high levels of arsenic in their drinking water are seven to 12 times more likely to die of lung cancer and other lung diseases in young adulthood. The risk of dying due to bronchiectasis, usually a rare lung disease, is 46 times higher than normal if the child's mother also drank the arsenic-contaminated water while pregnant.

"I sometimes ponder the improbability that drinking water with concentrations of arsenic less than one-thousandth of a gram per liter could do this, and think that I've got to be wrong. But our years of working with arsenic exposure in India and Chile tie in with this study perfectly," states Allan Smith, professor of epidemiology at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health.

According to the study, arsenic is particularly prevalent in a province in the north of Chile, one of the driest places on earth. In 1958, the cities of Antofagasta and neighboring Mejillones tapped into arsenic-laden rivers to supply their growing populations with water. For the next 13 years, the water supply for all residents in the cities was laced with an average of 860 micrograms per liter of arsenic. In contrast, the standard for arsenic in drinking water in the United States was 50 micrograms per liter, now 10 micrograms per liter. The Chilean cities became a tragic natural experiment for studying the effects of arsenic on humans.

Further information from the study states that, "Putting these results in perspective, studies have found that the rates of early-adult lung cancer among survivors of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki exposed to high levels of radiation before birth or as children are many times lower than those in Antofagasta and Mejillones. Only active smoking itself results in lung cancer rates higher than the seven-fold increase found in his study." It's chilling to consider how global this problem might be. Less than fifteen years ago, elevated concentrations of arsenic were reported in the drinking water in the desert where I lived, right here in the United States. The research will appear in the July issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, and will be made available online. Environmental Health Perspectives has made the 27-page abstract available now, as a PDF document.