No clear concerns related to health risks in the European population with low inorganic arsenic exposure (overview)

Abstract

An overview of recent European background inorganic arsenic (iAs) levels and related human health risks is given. The main aim was to summarize and confront the existing concentration data, unresolved low dose-response issues (linearity, nonlinearity, threshold, adaptation, hormesis), and methodological approaches hampered by several uncertainties on several levels. Daily doses are calculated from dietary intake (food, water As content multiplied by intake frequencies) and compared by reverse calculated doses from urine iAs metabolites (iAs + dimethylarsenic acid + monomethylarsonic acid) from human biomonitoring data (both in a range 0.05–0.60 μg kg−1 bw/day for children, adolescents and adults). With data obtained a health risk assessment is performed by existing regulation norms. Several flaws are addressed. For instance, urine DMA used as iAs metabolite is overestimated as its source can also be food items. Further, existing regulation norms (which are under reevaluation by US EPA) are based on a linear dose-response approach valid for high exposure only and highly questionable at low exposure levels. Nevertheless, even by using the conventional approaches with discussed flaws leading to anticipated overestimation, the potential cancer risk was estimated to be of low concern regarding the margins of exposure (MOE) for investigated age groups with average food intake and average iAs concentration in diet (15.3–40.6), supported by MOE calculated from human biomonitoring data (21.4).