Feasibility Study to Relate Arsenic in Drinking Water to Skin Cancer in the United States

In the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 1980 document Ambient Water Quality Criteria for Arsenic [1], a risk estimate was developed for non-melanoma skin cancer due to arsenic exposure from drinking water based on an epidemiological study by Tseng and co-workers in Taiwan [2]. This analysis estimated a lifetime risk of 10⁻⁵ for a lifetime exposure to drinking water containing 0.025 μg of arsenic per liter. The present study is an analysis of the feasibility of undertaking an epidemiological investigation to confirm whether this Taiwan-based risk estimate is applicable to United States populations.