Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and Dartmouth Medical School have found that the ability to mount an immune response to influenza A (H1N1) infection is significantly compromised by a low level of arsenic exposure that commonly occurs through drinking contaminated well water. Study findings are reported in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.br /br /”When a normal person or mouse is infected with the flu, they immediately develop an immune response,” says Joshua Hamilton, the MBL’s Chief Academic and Scientific Officer and a senior scientist in the MBL’s Bay Paul Center. However, in mice that had ingested 100 ppb (parts per billion) arsenic in their drinking water for five weeks, the immune response to H1N1 infection was initially feeble, and when a response finally did kick in days later, it was too late. “There was a massive infiltration of immune cells to the lungs and a massive inflammatory response, which led to bleeding and damage in the lung,” Hamilton says.br /br /The EPA considers 10 ppb arsenic in drinking water safe, yet concentrations of 100 ppb and higher are commonly found in well water in regions where arsenic is geologically abundant, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Florida, and large parts of the Upper Midwest, the Southwest, and the Rocky Mountains.br /br /”One thing that did strike us, when we heard about the recent H1N1 outbreak, is Mexico has large areas of very high arsenic in their well water, including the areas where the flu first cropped up. We don’t know that the Mexicans who got the flu were drinking high levels of arsenic, but it’s an intriguing notion that this may have contributed,” Hamilton says.br /br /Arsenic exposure not only disrupts the innate immune system, as the present study shows, it also disrupts the endocrine (hormonal) system in an unusually broad way, which Hamilton’s laboratory discovered and first reported in 1998.br /br /strongDr. Grout’s Comment:/strongbr /br /The good news is that arsenic does not accumulate in the body over a lifetime, as do other a href=”http://www.arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/therapies/heavy_metal_detox.html”toxic metals/a such as lead, cadmium, and mercury. Organic arsenic usually exits the body through urine in a few months, but when you have constant daily exposure to it through drinking water or by eating commercially-raised chickens who were fed a href=”http://www.arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/articles/kid_food.html#arsenic”arsenic-laced feed/a, then you have a constant supply of arsenic on board that can do harm. Arsenic is a carcinogenic. br /br /Although the use of arsenic has been recently banned by various countries in various ways, there is a lot of it out there. The vast majority of pressure-treated wood was treated with an arsenic compound because the toxicity of arsenic to insects, bacteria and fungi makes it a great preservative. The arsenic leaches out however when it leaches out of the wood into the surrounding soil (from playground equipment, for instance). Arsenic is also released when treated wood is burned. br /br /A good description of arsenic toxicity can be read at the following website, from the University of Arizona. a href=”http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/water/az1112.pdf”http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/water/az1112.pdf/adiv class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4769404502414351890-5246954709502671740?l=arizonaadvancedmedicine.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div