Masuda Progress in Earth and Planetary Science
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40645-018-0224-3(2018) 5:68

Progress in Earth andPlanetary Science

REVIEW

Open AccessArsenic cycling in the Earth’s crust andhydrosphere: interaction between naturally
occurring arsenic and human activities
Harue Masuda

Abstract
Field-based research on naturally occurring arsenic contamination of surface waters and groundwaters and themechanisms of contamination are reviewed. The distribution of arsenic is strongly related to areas of active plate
tectonics, magmatism and associated hydrothermal activity, and high rates of erosion. Sources of arsenic contamination
are mainly hydrothermal water, sulfide and arsenide minerals, volcanic ash, and iron oxyhydroxide/oxide as
weathering products. The promotion of the reduction and oxidation of arsenic source minerals by in situ microbialactivity is an important secondary mechanism that often determines arsenic levels in groundwater. Anthropogenic
activities, such as geothermal and mining operations, as well as excess pumping of shallow groundwaters, disperse
arsenic in the environment, thereby expanding areas of arsenic contamination.
Keywords: Arsenic contamination, Geologic cycle, Plate tectonics, Reduction, Oxidation

Introduction
Human beings are facing a crisis of an increasing demand
for freshwater in the face of decreasing freshwater resources. One of the most serious problems threatening
water resources is contamination with arsenic, which ishighly toxic. Since the late 1980s, when the arsenicosis
was reported in West Bengal, India (Mandal and Suzuki
2002), arsenic-contaminated groundwater and associatedhealth disasters have occurred throughout the world, but
especially in Asian countries. Arsenic is the first toxic
element known to spread globally in the hydrosphere.
The World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines haverecommended since 1993 that the arsenic level in aquatic
solutions, including drinking water, should be < 10 μg/L.
This threshold was selected not so much because it is an
epidemiologically safe level but because of the limits ofanalytical and treatment techniques (WHO 2006). For example, the quantification limit of arsenic by the commonlyused atomic absorption spectrophotometry method is
0.001 to 0.005 mg/L, much higher than the limit of
0.01 μg/L for inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy. In addition, the guideline followed differs by
Correspondence: harue@sci.osaka-cu.ac.jp
Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, 3-3-138, Sugimoto,Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka 558-8585, Japancountry: Japan (since 1993), the USA, Canada (both since2006; EPA 2018; Health Canada 2017), and Australia(since 2011; NHMRC and NRMMC 2011) follow the
WHO guideline of 10 μg/L, but many developing countries still apply the older standard of 50 μg/L.
Arsenic is a minor but ubiquitous element of the Earth’s
crust, and some chemical species of this amphoteric element are volatile and highly soluble in aquatic solution. As aresult, arsenic is easily released from the crust into natural
waters in conjunction with changes to the chemistry of
the aquatic environment. The estimated arsenic reservoirs
and fluxes at the Earth’s surface, including in the shallow
crust (Fig. 1), show that anthropogenic activities play animportant role in dispersing arsenic contamination to thehydrosphere, pedosphere, and atmosphere. Arsenic has
been used for many purposes, but especially for pesticides
and wood preservation. For example, sodium arsenite solution applied as a pesticide in cattle dip from 1950s to
1980s led to groundwater in Australia being polluted withup to 3000 mg/L arsenic (McLaren et al. 1998), and in theUSA, applications of arsenic-containing pesticides to cotton fields until 1990s increased the arsenic concentrationin the soil to 23 mg/kg, compared with an average concentration of 5 mg/kg in surrounding soils (Cox et al.
1996). Since these studies were published, the production© The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, andreproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Masuda Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2018) 5:68

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Fig. 1 Global arsenic cycle. Fluxes and reservoir sizes in different parts of the geosphere (Matschullat 2000)

of toxic arsenic compounds such as pesticides has decreased, although alloys containing arsenic continue to be
used for semiconductors (JOGMEC 2012). Although anthropogenic contamination due to the application of arsenic compounds to agricultural fields is probably
decreasing at least in more developed countries, activities
to develop natural resources such as mining and geothermal energy extraction are a continuing cause of environmental arsenic contamination.
This review focuses on naturally occurring arsenic
contamination from the points of views of geologic arsenic cycling and anthropogenic impacts on the spreadof arsenic contamination.

Global distribution of arsenic contamination
There are three major natural sources of arsenic contamination: hydrothermal activity, ore deposits, and Cenozoic
sediments. Other sources include coal and coal combustion. Arsenic-contaminated areas in Latin America (14countries in Central and South America) are concentrated
in the circum-Pacific region, where they are associatedwith the “Ring of Fire” (Fig. 2). The arsenic sources in thisarea are related to magmatic activity (volcanoes including

volcanic ash and sulfide deposits). In addition, more than
100 aquifers along river basins in this region are contaminated with arsenic (Bundschuh et al. 2012).
High arsenic concentrations in geothermal waters reflect
the fact that arsenic is a volatile component of magma andhighly soluble in water. Hot-spring waters sometimes contain high concentrations of arsenic; for example, many hot
springs in Yellowstone National Park, USA, are contaminated with up to 10 mg/L arsenic (Stauffer and Thompson
1984; Webster and Nordtrom 2003). Arsenic from hot
springs can be transported in surface waters and enter riverbed sediments; for example, along the Owens River, arsenite released from hot springs and oxidized to arsenate in
the river water by microbial activity precipitates and settles
to the bottom, where it becomes a component of the riverbed sediments (0–60 mg/kg; Nimick et al. 1998). Geothermal well fluids occasionally contain higher arsenic
concentrations than hot-spring waters, from > 1 up to
50 mg/L (Webster and Nordtrom 2003 and references
therein). Prior to 2000, the outflow of arsenic from Waikato Power Station, New Zealand, was 145 t/year, but sincethen, it has been reduced to ~ 70 t/year (Webster-Brown
and Lane 2005 and references therein). The large quantity

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Fig. 2 World arsenic contamination map. This figure was produced based on the following reports and those in the text: Smedley andKinniburgh (2002); Acharyya et al. (2005); An et al. (1997); Blanes et al. (2011); Camm et al. (2004); Gutiérrez-Caminero et al. (2015); Razo et al. (2004)

of arsenic in the power station drainage water has led to arsenic concentrations of 61–1790 mg/kg in the Waikato
River (Webster-Brown et al. 2000).
Ore deposits are the second main source of arsenic. For
example, in New Zealand, arsenic released fromarsenic-bearing marcasite found in hydrothermal ore deposits formed 5 Ma causes groundwater concentrations of> 100 μg/L (Craw et al. 2000). Although the distributionof naturally occurring arsenic contamination around ore
bodies is generally localized, anthropogenic materials associated with the mining of ore bodies, such as tailings
and sludge, expand the area of contamination into thehydrosphere and pedosphere of the surrounding area. The
excavated ore bodies and the ensuing chemical weathering
produce sediments highly contaminated with arsenic thatthen become sources of potential arsenic contamination.
The third main source of arsenic contamination is aquifers in Cenozoic sediments, which occur widely aroundthe world (Fig. 2). The total arsenic concentration in contaminated groundwater is not extremely high comparedwith the average concentration in soils and sediments. For
example, in a Holocene aquifer in Bangladesh, the total arsenic concentration in bulk aquifer sediments ranges from
5 to 16 mg/kg whereas > 1 mg/L arsenic has been detectedin the groundwater (Seddique et al. 2011). Thus, contamination of the groundwater depends mainly on the chemical form of the arsenic host phase and the occurrence ofchanges to the aquatic environment that lead to the release of arsenic from the aquifer sediments rather than on
the arsenic concentration in the sediments. The

mechanisms by which arsenic is released from Cenozoic,
especially Holocene, aquifer sediments are described in
the next section.

Release mechanisms of arsenic from aquifer
sediments
Naturally occurring arsenic contamination of surface waters and groundwater is associated with changes in ambient physicochemical conditions. The most importantfactors controlling the release of arsenic from sediments
to the aquatic environment are the redox conditions andthe pH of the water.
Arsenic contamination of groundwater is most serious,from the point of view of spatial scale and the number ofaffected individuals, in the Holocene aquifers along large
rivers that originate in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan
Plateau: for example, along the Ganges–Brahmaputra river
system in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh; along the Red
River in Vietnam; along the Mekong River in Cambodia
and Vietnam (e.g., Charlet and Polya 2006; Fendorf et al.
2010); and along the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia,
China (e.g., Smedley et al. 2003; Guo et al. 2016).
Arsenic-contaminated aquifers in which ferrous and ammonium ions are dissolved in the groundwater are characterized by reducing conditions and microbial respiration(e.g., Radloff et al. 2008; Quichsall et al. 2008). Reductionof groundwater is the main mechanism causing the dissolution of arsenic in Cenozoic aquifers; the major hostphase is iron oxyhydroxides/oxides, which strongly adsorb
arsenic (e.g., Nickson et al. 2000; van Geen et al. 2004).

Masuda Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2018) 5:68

Iron oxyhydroxides/oxides are stable under oxic (positiveEh) and weakly acid to alkaline (pH > 4) conditions,whereas arsenic is released by desorption from or decomposition of iron oxyhydroxides/oxides under reducing andalkaline conditions (van Geen et al. 2006).
Arsenic contamination also occurs in oxic aquifers(Amini et al. 2008), where volcanic ash is often the arsenic source. For example, aquifers of the Ethiopian Rift
Valley, Africa (0.6–190 μg/L; Rango et al. 2013), have become contaminated through the dissolution of volcanic
ash under oxic conditions. Such arsenic-contaminatedgroundwaters formed via dissolution of volcanic ash inoxic environments are widespread in South America, especially in Argentina and Bolivia. Groundwaters in the
Pampas of Argentina contain a few hundred micrograms
arsenic per liter, and the mean Eh, dissolved O2, and pHof the contaminated groundwaters are + 73 ± 65 mV, 6.6± 2.2 mg/L, and 6.9–8.9, respectively. The level of contamination is in general lower in oxic than in anoxic
aquifers, although the arsenic concentration in the aquifers of the Pampas can be as high as 15,000 μg/L
(Bundschuh et al. 2012 and references therein; Nicolli
et al. 2012). In a semi-arid climate, intense chemical
weathering of volcanic ash during the rainy season andcarbonate precipitation from the water during the dry
season produce alkaline conditions. Arsenic concentrations in South America are secondarily controlled by theadsorption–desorption affinity of iron oxyhydroxides
produced by chemical weathering (Bundschuh et al.
2012). An alkaline arsenic-contaminated water was observed in the pit lake of an abandoned gold mine (Savage
et al. 2009) and in groundwaters in Punjab, Pakistan, where
the arsenic concentration can reach 1900 μg/L, plausibly asa result of chlorite weathering at a pH range from 6.9 to 8.0
under oxic conditions without dissolved iron (Farooqi et al.
2007a, 2007b; Masuda et al. 2010).

Distribution of arsenic in Japan
A geochemical map of arsenic in the Japanese islands(Imai et al. 2004) was produced using data from elemental analyses of riverbed sediments, which generally reflect the average concentrations in the surrounding
geology (Fig. 3). It is notable that arsenic is distributed
along the active volcanic front in Northeast Japan andKyushu, but it is associated with Cretaceous to Neogene
igneous rock bodies on western Honshu Island.
Hydrothermal activity has been reported to cause arsenic contamination in many hot spring areas of Japan
since the 1950s; for example, in Beppu (Kyushu) (Kawakami et al. 1956), Tamagawa (Akita, Northeast Japan)(Minami et al. 1958), Hakone, Yugawara (Kanagawa)(Awaya et al. 2002), and Toyohira (Hokkaido) (Jin et al.
2012). In Kusatsu-Shirane (Gunma), hot-spring waterwith an arsenic concentration of up to 7 mg/L flowed

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into the Yukawa River from the middle 1980s to the1990s (Kikawada et al. 2006, 2009). A maximum arsenic
concentration of 3.4 mg/L was reported in hydrothermal
water at Kakkonda Geothermal Plant (Akita) (Okada
et al. 2002).
One of the most serious Japanese arsenic disasters occurred at Toroku mine, Miyazaki (Kyushu), where arsenite was mined from the 1820s to 1962; in 1990, 146
people were found to be suffering from arsenicosis due
to inhalation of refining soot and drinking contaminatedwater (Shimada 2009). Mining and smelting activities
often cause arsenic contamination to be spread to air,sediments, and streams, whereas in the absence of suchactivities, it is usually confined to a small area (as notedin the “Global distribution of arsenic contamination”
section). In a study in the Hokusetsu Mountains, Osaka
Prefecture, on the eastern edge of the Cretaceous–Neogene magmatic bodies of western Honshu, Even et al.
(2017) observed that hornfels with a high arsenic content near the granitic complex led to arsenic contamination of the surrounding ground and surface waters.
Although many sulfide mines are present in this area,
they are not as important as sources of arsenic contamination as the arsenide disseminated in hornfels andshales. Similarly, leaching and oxidation of arsenic indisseminated hydrothermal gold ore deposits hosted in
Miocene sedimentary rock led to arsenic contaminationof shallow groundwater in Sulawesi, Indonesia (Iskandar
et al. 2012). The mechanism of arsenic contamination inboth cases was probably oxidation and decomposition
reactions of oxic water infiltrating through a fault systemwith diffusively distributed sulfides and arsenides.
In addition, Shimada (1996) reported that 2635 of
11,673 wells (22.6%) in the Cenozoic aquifer beneath
Tsukushi Plain, Fukuoka Prefecture (northeast Japan),contained > 10 μg/L of arsenic. Fortunately, however, nocases of arsenicosis have been reported from this area.

Geologic cycling of arsenic
Arc magmatism and subsequent hydrothermal activity,
together with high rates of erosion and transport to sedimentary basins downstream, contribute to contamination via in situ decomposition of arsenic-containing
minerals. Tectonics plays a major role in determining
erosion rates, which is partly ascribable to steeper slopes
produced by active crustal movement (Hecht and Oguchi 2017). Thus, plate tectonics play an important rolein the geologic cycling of arsenic. In this section, thegeologic cycling of arsenic is documented (Fig. 4).
Arsenic is both a siderophile and chalcophile elementthat can behave as a metal and combine with sulfur;
however, in molten rock, it shows volatile behavior, similar to the light rare earth elements (Sims et al. 1990). As
of 2014, arsenic has been shown to occur in 568

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Fig. 3 Geochemical map showing arsenic distribution of riverbed sediments of Japan (Imai et al. 2004). The areas indicating volcanic fronts andplutonic rock ranges are added for this report

different mineral species (Nordstrom et al. 2014). The
primary arsenic-containing mineral species are sulfides
and arsenides, which form abundantly in association
with magmatism and related hydrothermal activities.
These include realgar (As4S4), orpiment (As2S3), arsenopyrite (FeAsS), and enargite (CuAsS). Other sulfide minerals are also primary sources of arsenic, especiallypyrite, which can contain > 2% arsenic (e.g., pyrite in the

Mother Lode Gold District of California; Savage et al.
2000). Pyrite is commonly distributed not only in igneous rock bodies but also in sedimentary formations; forexample, under strongly reducing conditions, arsenic isincorporated into authigenic pyrite during sediment diagenesis (e.g., Masuda et al. 2005; Saunders et al. 2008).
The partition coefficient of arsenic between sulfide andsilicate melts varies as a function of oxygen fugacity; at a

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Fig. 4 Geologic cycle concerning redistribution of arsenic. Digit in parenthesis gives the average concentrations of each geologic body (references arein the text). Purple and blue colored letters indicate the releasing and fixing mechanism of arsenic in the cycle

given temperature and FeO content, the proportion of arsenic in silicate and monosulfide melts increases with oxygen fugacity (Li and Audétat 2012, 2015). Althoughsilicate and carbonate mineral phases do not host arsenic
as a major element (Majzlan et al. 2014), under conditionsof low temperature, high oxygen fugacity, and low sulfur
fugacity, silicates and carbonates can incorporate arsenic;
for example, filatovite (K [Al, Zn]2(As, Si)2O8), a variety offeldspar, has been found to be associated with volcanism
in Kamchatka (Vergasova et al. 2004). Charnock et al.
(2007) also found that arsenic was incorporated into garnet in the overgrowth of a hydrothermal vein, and Pascua
et al. (2005) found arsenic-enriched smectite in hydrothermal precipitates at a geothermal plant in Akita, Japan. In
addition, Ryan et al. (2011) reported that groundwater inthe fracture zone of ultramafic rocks was contaminatedwith arsenic derived from serpentine and magnesite via
chemical weathering.
McDonough and Sun (1995) estimated the arsenic concentration of Earth’s primitive mantle to be 0.05 mg/kg.
Hattori et al. (2002) analyzed mantle xenoliths and foundthat arsenic was highly concentrated in microscale sulfide
minerals, and they reported that its concentration was

higher in lherzolite than in harzburgite from the same
area. For example, concentrations in sulfide minerals fromlherzolite and harzburgite in Lesotho were > 200 mg/kg
and < 14 mg/kg, respectively. In addition, comparative
analyses of mantle xenoliths of Ichinomegata, Japan,
showed that arsenic was depleted in wedge mantle, where
microscale sulfide minerals had arsenic concentrations of< 50 mg/kg (Hattori et al. 2002).
Norr et al. (1996) reported arsenic concentrations of~ 10 mg/kg in arc magmas enriched by hydrothermal
fluids derived from metamorphic dehydration of the
subducting slab, and they confirmed the release of arsenic from the subducting slab by both laboratory experiments and analyses of field-collected samples. You et al.
(1996) conducted laboratory hydrothermal experiments
in which they reacted sediment from the Nankai
Trough, where the Philippine Sea Plate is subducting beneath the Eurasian Plate, with a synthetic NaCl–CaCl2
solution and showed enrichment of the hydrothermal
solution with arsenic at the relatively low temperature of~ 300 °C. However, in relatively cool subduction zones
such as that in which the Catalina Schist formed, lessfore-arc devolatilization of arsenic occurs, and arsenic isMasuda Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2018) 5:68

more likely to be deeply subducted, resulting inarsenic-enriched arc lavas (Bebout et al. 1999).
Arsenic-bearing serpentine, possibly formed by alterationof fore-arc mantle, has been found in the Himalayas,
where the arsenic was derived from fluid from the subducting slab (Hattori et al. 2005). Norr et al. (1996) documented a decrease in the arsenic concentration of arc
lavas on the order of 85%, in some cases as much as 95%,
from fore-arc to back-arc along convergent margins.
Arsenic is also released from deep continental andisland-arc crust during the low-temperature andhigh-pressure metamorphism that forms pelitic schists; inrocks from the Sambagawa metamorphic belt, Japan, thearsenic concentration decreased from ~ 10 mg/kg to 0 as
the temperature of metamorphism increased from 300 to
450 °C (Fujiwara et al. 2011).
Submarine hydrothermal fluids from the East Pacific
Rise and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge contain up to 80.5 μg/L
and 24 μg/L of arsenic, respectively, whereas those fromback-arc basin and island-arc locations are much higher(1386 μg/L and 5850 μg/L, respectively; Breuer andPichler 2013). Most arsenic in hydrothermal solutions
hosted by basalt in Iceland is complexed with sulfur(i.e., As (OH)S22−, AsS3H2−, AsS33−, As (SH)4−; Sigufusson
et al. 2011). Arsenic and sulfur form covalent bonds, andthese chemical species precipitate from the hydrothermal
solution as arsenide and sulfide minerals. Thus, many sulfide minerals, such as pyrite, contain arsenic as an impurity. As the temperature of the hydrothermal solution
decreases and its oxygen fugacity increases, arsenic–sulfur
complexes are decomposed and oxidized to arsenites,
which are commonly found in hot-spring water where it
flows out at the surface.
The arsenic concentration of Earth’s crust is 1 to
1.8 mg/kg on average (e.g., Taylor and McLennan 1985;
Wedepohl 1995), and all types of rocks and sediments
contain arsenic at concentrations on the order of milligrams per kilogram (Table 1). Surface sediments andsoils in various parts of the world contain higher andmore variable concentrations, ranging from 2 to 20 mg/
kg on average, than the average crustal concentration(Mandal and Suzuki 2002 and references therein). The
average arsenic concentration in 3024 marine sediment
samples from coastal Japan was determined to be
14 mg/kg, with a maximum concentration of ~ 580 mg/
kg; however, 65% of the sediments had < 10 mg/kg, and87.5% had < 20 mg/kg (AIST: https://gbank.gsj.jp/geo
chemmap/ocean/data/ganyuryo/ocean-noudo.csv). Sedimentswith high concentrations of arsenic in inland areas ofJapan are associated with coal and sulfide mines(Ohta et al. 2010).
Solubilities of sulfide and arsenide minerals in water
are generally low, and in anoxic environments, theseminerals are insoluble. For example, under standard

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Table 1 Arsenic concentrations of rocks and sediments
Rock type

Average As
concentration(mg/kg)Range ofconcentration(mg/kg)

Igneous rock
Basalt2.3

0.18–113

Andesite

2.7

0.5–5.8

Granite

1.3

0.2–1518

0.5–143

Metamorphic rock
Slate
Sedimentary rock, sediments
Shale/submarine shale

3–15

< 490

Marine sedimentsa

14

0~580

Sandstone

4.1

0.6–120

Limestone/dolomite

2.6

0.1–20.1

Evaporite

3.5

0.1–10Ferrigenous sedimentary rocks
River and lake sediments

1–29005

Soli
Peaty soil
Coal

< 1–13,000
0.4–10013

2–36
0.3–35,00

Edited data from Boyle and Jonasson (1973) and Smedley and Kinniburgh (2002)a
Coastal area of Japan Islands,
AIST https://gbank.gsj.jp/geochemmap/ocean/data/ganyuryo/ocean-noudo.csv

temperature and pressure conditions, the solubility coefficient (as log K) of realgar (AsS) is − 83.13, and that of
orpiment (As2S2) is − 180.43 (Boyle and Jonasson 1973).
However, in oxic waters, those minerals are easily oxidized to dissolve. Typically, during chemical weatheringof arsenic ore deposits and subsequent soil formation,arsenic host phases change as follows: arsenopyrite andlöllinite in the ore body become scorodite, pharmacosiderite, and arsenosiderite in the weathered rock, andthen arsenic-bearing goethite in soil (Majzlan et al.
2014). In the alteration products, arsenate ion substitutes for sulfate ion under neutral to alkaline conditions(Fernández-Martínez et al. 2008). Because in general arsenite and arsenate minerals (e.g., scorodite) are highly
soluble in aqueous solution, except under strongly acidic
conditions, these minerals are often sources of arsenic
contamination. In fact, weathering products can be more
important sources of arsenic contamination than primary source rocks and minerals as a result of secondary
enrichment and their higher solubilities. For example,
bulk arsenic concentrations in soils, sediments, andweathered crust from river basins in the Mother Lode
District, California, are higher (> 2000 mg/kg at the
maximum) than concentrations in nearby host rocks(< 600 mg/kg) (Savage et al. 2000).
In arsenic-contaminated Cenozoic aquifers, arsenic ishosted mainly in iron oxyhydroxides/oxides, especiallyMasuda Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2018) 5:68

goethite, which is a weakly crystallized product from ferrihydrite (amorphous iron hydroxides) via chemical weathering of iron-bearing minerals. However, few studies haveexamined the site of iron oxyhydroxides/oxide precipitation and the incorporation of arsenic into the aquifer sediments. Dissolved arsenic in the Red River of Vietnam isprobably derived from sulfide mineral smelting operations
at upstream locations in China (Cui et al. 2014). However,waste arsenic from smelting operations cannot be thesource of the arsenic in the Quaternary sediment aquifersof the delta. In the Red River delta, the major mechanismof arsenic contamination of groundwater is probably reduction of arsenic-bearing iron oxyhydroxide minerals(e.g., Berg et al. 2007). Instead, arsenic-bearing iron hydroxides/oxides in the delta sediments are probably chemical weathering products transported from an upstream
source area. In situ decomposition of arsenic-bearing pyrite occurring in association with seasonal changes of thegroundwater level was presumed to be the cause ofarsenic contamination in Munshuganj, Bangladesh(Pollizzotto et al. 2005), whereas in situ chemical weathering of chlorite was inferred to be the main mechanism inSonragaon, Bangladesh (Masuda et al. 2012, 2013). The
results of these studies imply that the source of arsenic
contamination in aquifers of the Ganges–Brahmaputradelta is in situ dissolution of arsenic from primary minerals rather than dissolution of or desorption fromarsenic-bearing iron oxyhydroxides. Moreover, excess useof groundwater would accelerate such dissolution by promoting inductive recharge of surface water and rapidchanges in chemical conditions.

Biogeochemical reactions related to arsenic
contamination
Biogeochemical reactions are another factor controlling
arsenic behavior, especially in the hydrosphere and pedosphere. Primary production affects arsenic behavior, especially in surface waters, because of the similarity of thechemical characteristics of As(V) and phosphorous. Clean
open-ocean water contains 1.5 μg/L arsenic on average(Andreae 1978), whereas in terrestrial waters, the background level of arsenic is < 0.1 μg/L (Matschullat 2000),
but the concentration varies widely, depending on thegeology and on the presence of anthropogenic sourcesalong the channels. Biological alteration of arsenic compounds in surface waters has been well documented.
Andreae (1978) showed that As(III), DMAA(V) (dimethylarsinic acid), and MMAA (V) (monomethylarsonic acid)are produced in association with increasing phytoplankton
activity in Donner and Squaw lakes in California, andsince then, numerous studies have documented that increasing eutrophication of estuaries is globally associatedwith the reduction of arsenate and organo-arsenical production. For example, arsenite and methyl-arsenic species

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became dominant in Lake Biwa water as biological activity
increased (Hasegawa et al. 2010). Seawater contains asmuch as 1.8 μg/L arsenic, and the arsenic is sometimes
concentrated by marine biological activity. For example,
arseno-sugar compounds concentrate in phytoplankton
and algae, and arseno-betaine concentrates in marine animals (Edmonds et al. 1997). Derivatives such as monomethylarsonic acid can also form by in situ microbial
methylation (Reimer and Thompson 1988). In coastal
areas, organo-arsenic compounds, mostly derived frommarine biological activity, account for < 1% of total arsenic
in surface sediments (Takeuchi et al. 2005). Takeuchi et al.
(2005) noted that organo-arsenic compounds in marine
sediments are decomposed by microbial activity withinseveral decades; therefore, the formation rate of neworgano-arsenic compounds is smaller than their degradation rate.
Microbial metabolic activity also plays a key role inthe cycling of arsenic in the geosphere, including ingroundwater aquifers, because microorganisms transform the arsenic into more mobile forms (Oremland andStolz 2003; Yamamura and Amachi 2014). Microbiallymediated metabolic activity involving arsenic can be categorized into four processes: (1) arsenite oxidation, (2)arsenate respiration, (3) arsenate reduction, and (4) arsenite methylation (Mukhopadhyay et al. 2002; Cai et al.
2013). Arsenic-metabolizing microbes were first identified in geologic bodies in which arsenic had become
concentrated; for example, arsenite-oxidizing andarsenate-reducing bacteria were found in riverbed sediments containing mine tailings in France (Quéméneur
et al. 2010). Arsenic-metabolizing bacteria are now
known to be widely distributed in both contaminatedand uncontaminated sediments (Cai et al. 2013).
Incubation experiments conducted with sediments fromarsenic-contaminated groundwater aquifers of the Ganges–Brahmaputra delta demonstrated a relation between
microbial activity and arsenic behavior; for example, arsenic was fixed in authigenic framboidal pyrite (Akai et al.
2004), and anaerobic metal-reducing bacteria worked torelease arsenic from the sediments via reduction of Fe (III)(Islam et al. 2004). Zhu et al. (2008) showed that
arsenic-bearing pyrite in black shale decomposed seventimes faster when incubated with microbes than when incubated without microbes. These experimental results
demonstrated that microbial activity can promote arsenic
contamination of groundwater aquifers by changing thearsenic phase from insoluble to soluble.
Arsenic-oxidizing (Ghosh et al. 2014) and arsenicreducing bacteria (Paul et al. 2015) identified by genetic
analyses of microorganisms in arsenic-contaminatedgroundwaters from West Bengal, India, also suggest thatmicrobial activity plays an essential role in releasing arsenic into groundwater aquifers in that area.

Masuda Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2018) 5:68

Conclusions
Although natural arsenic contamination processes of surface and groundwaters are not simple but involve various
interactions among the geosphere, hydrosphere, andbiosphere, contamination mechanisms have been well
documented in recent decades. Arsenic contamination is
widespread globally, but contaminated areas tend to concentrate in and around active tectonic zones. Large-scale
contamination does not simply reflect the arsenic concentration in host rocks and sediments; the dispersal of arsenic phases is important for promoting water–mineralinteractions because of the large reaction interface between minerals/materials and water. In addition, secondary arsenic minerals formed by chemical weathering likely
expand the area and increase the level of contamination inassociation with biogeochemically promoted changes ofredox and pH conditions in the hydrosphere.
The arsenic biogeochemical cycle affects the foodchain. Inorganic arsenic compounds not only contaminate the hydrosphere, they also accumulate in biologicalorganisms. Because inorganic arsenic compounds are
more toxic than most organic arsenic compounds, theirpresence in agricultural products is concerning. For
example, in Japan, rice is a major source of inorganic arsenic (Oguri et al. 2014). Research aimed at enhancing
the understanding of the metabolic cycling of arsenic byhumans would facilitate prevention and mitigation of arsenic poisoning.
Not all arsenic contamination can be mitigated, becausesome contamination occurs as a result of natural processes. However, by acquiring more knowledge of the natural arsenic cycle, we can find ways to minimize the areaand number of people affected by arsenic contamination.
Many studies have documented the chemical properties
and reaction paths of arsenic species and identified
arsenic-metabolizing bacteria with the aim of developing
chemical treatment and bioremediation methods forarsenic-contaminated groundwaters (e.g., Takeuchi et al.
2007; Yamamura and Amachi 2014). International cooperation with regard to both scientific and practical aspects is
key to preventing and mitigating arsenic disasters, especially in developing countries, where they can be particularly severe.
Acknowledgements
I thank the session conveners of the 2017 JpGU annual meeting, especiallyProf. Y. Himiyama, for giving me the opportunity to present this report, andtwo anonymous reviewers, for the valuable comments to improve the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by KAKENHI (JSPS scientific fund) #17H01863.
Author’s contributions
The author read and approved the final manuscript.
Competing interests
The author declares that there are no competing interests.

Page 9 of 11

Publisher’s NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims inpublished maps and institutional affiliations.
Received: 6 February 2018 Accepted: 5 October 2018

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