International conference on environmental arsenic: an overview (original) (raw)

The purpose of the conference was to assess the current level of scientific knowledge about arsenic as an environmental toxicant and to identify needed areas of research. This overview was assembled with the assistance of persons attending the conference, but final responsibility for the summary content and attached recommendations should be regarded as that of only the conference chairman. The meeting was divided into consecutive sessions dealing with methods and problems of analysis, sources of environmental pollution, occurrence and transformation in-nature, effects and dose-response relationships in humans, kinetics and metabolism, effects and dose-response relationships in animals. Each of these sessions is summarized below followed by recommendations for areas of future research.