Increased Childhood Mortality and Arsenic in Drinking Water in Matlab, Bangladesh: A Population-Based Cohort Study

BACKGROUND: Arsenic in drinking water was associated with increased risk of all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular death in adults. However, the extent to which exposure is related to all-cause and deaths from cancer and cardiovascular condition in young age is unknown. Therefore, we prospectively assessed whether long-term and recent arsenic exposures are associated with all-cause and cancer and cardiovascular mortalities in Bangladeshi childhood population. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We assembled a cohort of 58406 children aged 5-18 years from the Health and Demographic Surveillance System of icddrb in Bangladesh and followed during 2003-2010. There were 185 non-accidental deaths registered in-about 0.4 million person-years of observation. We calculated hazard ratios for cause-specific death in relation to exposure at baseline (µg/L), time-weighted lifetime average…