Drinking-water arsenic and blackfoot disease
Arsénico del agua y enfermedad del pie negro
- Date
- c. 1961-1968 · confidence medium
- Place
- Tainan, Taiwan
- Credited to
- Tseng Wen-pin and colleagues
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
An epidemiological study in south-western Taiwan that linked limb gangrene (blackfoot disease) and several cancers with arsenic in well water. It provided the first human dose-response relation between arsenic and disease.
The disease was described in the mid-20th century in south-western Taiwan; Tseng and colleagues linked it to arsenic intake (1961-1968). The area replaced the artesian wells with piped water from the 1960s-1970s.
What it led to
- WHO limits for arsenic in drinking water
- studies of skin, bladder and lung cancer from arsenic
- alert over arsenic in wells in Bangladesh and Bengal