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Arsenic

Sediment from a stream bed containing fracking wastewater (jars on the left) developed orange residues after 90 days; sediment from a clean stream bed (jar on the right) did not.

As fracking booms, waste spills rise — and so do arsenic levels in groundwater

Environment

Wastewater created by fracking contains many toxic elements and chemicals that can contaminate groundwater. The good news? Microbes in the soil feast on the metals and help clean up the spill. The bad news? This process can release high levels of arsenic into the groundwater.

Freezing the Arsenic in Giant Mine

The World

Emerging Science Note/Nanorust

ARSENIC IN WOOD

Coal Ash Controversy

The World

Emerging Science Note/Nanorust

Tiny magnetic particles of rust may clean dirty drinking water in developing countries.

Rice and… Arsenic?

A new study finds elevated levels of arsenic, a carcinogen, in rice grown in the southern U.S.

The World

California Drinking

Water agencies in western states are hard-pressed to pay for removing arsenic from tap water to meet new federal standards. But California towns may soon have to meet an even stricter standard. Tamara Keith reports.

The World

Don’t Drink the Water

You don’t have to go to a foreign country to find places where the water is undrinkable. Tamara Keith reports from a town in Central California where water is not only dirty and intermittent, but where the arsenic levels are a health threat.

Arsenic