Association between arsenic concentration of groundwater and mortality from leukemia and urological cancers in the northwest of Iran

Abstract Arsenic is one of the most important toxic elements in the environment and considered as a challenging threat to human health. The present study aims to determine the relationship between arsenic concentration in groundwater and mortality rates due to urological, and leukemia malignancies in Hamadan, Iran, as a hotspot of arsenic concentration. A total of 370 samples of tap water from urban and rural areas in all 9 counties of the Hamadan province was collected by grab sampling method. IBM SPSS Statistics V22.0 and linear regression model were applied to investigate the relationship between arsenic levels and mortality rates. The inverse distance weighting (IDW) method in ArcGIS 10.8 software was used to show spatial patterns of arsenic concentration and to estimate the unknown points. According to the results, in rural regions of Kaboodarahang, including Qapaqtapeh-ye Kord, Churmaq, Quhurd-e Olya, Qohurd-e Sofla, Jaganlu, the concentration of arsenic in groundwater were obtained 91.73±19.81, 100.45±20.3, 185.4±69.05, 180.5±31.2, 160.75±41.64 ppb, respectively. In some areas of Malayer and Nahavand, the As concentration ranged 1.7 - 10 times higher than standard values. Based on linear regression fitting, the risks of mortality for urological cancer, were 4.25 per 100,000 for men, and 1.28 per 100,000 for women, and regarding leukemia, they were 4.56 and 6.76 per 100,000 for men and women, respectively. In conclusion, this study provides an evidence that an exposure to high levels of arsenic was significantly associated with mortality rate due to leukemia and urological cancer.