Arsenic in the environment

Invitation: As series editors we are actually planning the preparation of new books in this series, and would like to ask you whether you or any of your colleagues would be interested to contribute a volume in the area of your expertise. The volume may be an authored or edited book and it may be a collection of selected and peer-reviewed papers from congresses and other scientific events as well. Although arsenic is known as 'silent toxin' since ancient time, and the contamination of drinking water resources by geogenic arsenic was described from different places around the world long ago —as e.g. in Argentina in 1917— it was not before two decades ago, that it received overwhelming public attention worldwide. As a consequence of the biggest arsenic calamity in the world was detected two decades ago in Southeast Asia, there has been an exponential rise in the scientific interest that triggered high quality research. Since then arsenic contamination in drinking water resources, soils, plants and air of predominantly geogenic origin, the propagation of arsenic in the food chain, the chronic affects of arsenic ingestion by humans, and their toxicological and related public health consequences, were described in many parts of the world, and every year new countries or regions are discovered, where the arsenic problem was not known so far. The presence of arsenic is found in several regions distributed all around the world, both in developing and industrialized countries; although mitigating the problem is quiet different in both, related to the different economic and social conditions in both country groups. Considering high concentrations of As in the drinking water only, it has been estimated that 200 million people worldwide are at risk; a number which is expected to further increase due to the recent lowering of the limits of arsenic concentration in drinking water to actually 10 μg/l, as it was already adopted by many countries, and considerations for even further decreasing this value. The book series " Arsenic in the Environment " is an inter-and multidisciplinary source of information, making an effort to link the occurrence of geogenic arsenic in different environments and the potential contamination of ground-and surface water, soil and air and their effect on the human society. The series fulfills the growing interest on the arsenic issue worldwide which is going alongside with stronger regulations of arsenic contents in drinking NEW BOOK SERIES