High toxic levels of arsenic in Amazon well water found

VIENNA: Shallow wells dug for drinking water in the Amazon basin in order to avoid polluted rivers contain up to 70 times the recommended limit of arsenic, researchers warned on Tuesday.

Samples taken from 250 sites along the Amazon -- the first systematic analysis of the region’s well water -- also revealed hazardous levels of manganese and aluminium, they reported at a conference in Vienna.

"Faced with polluted rivers, many rural communities rely on groundwater as a source of drinking water," lead researcher Caroline de Meyer, a scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, told AFP.

"In parts of the Amazon basin, groundwater contains these trace elements in concentrations that are potentially harmful to human health." "Contamination should not be underestimated -- all our data point in the same direction," she added. Levels of manganese were up to 15 times higher than World Health Organisation (WHO) limits, while aluminium exceeded WHO standards by up to three-fold.