HANOVER, N.H., Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Low doses of arsenic -- found naturally in some U.S. drinking water -- disrupt the activity of a hormone critical to development, a study found.
"Arsenic is a natural, yet pervasive, chemical in the environment; we can't seem to escape it," Joshua Hamilton, one of the authors on this study and the director of the Center for Environmental Health Sciences at Dartmouth Medical School, said in a statement.
"By learning how it adversely affects biological processes and at what levels we should be concerned, we will hopefully someday be able to mitigate its impact on human health."
In previous work, Hamilton learned that arsenic at low doses appears to suppress the ability of all critical steroid receptors, including those for estrogen and testosterone, to respond to their normal hormone signals.
This study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found in an animal model that arsenic disrupts a developmental process that is regulated by hormones and it does this at extremely low doses that are directly relevant to human exposures of concern.
Arsenic can disrupt these hormone pathways at extremely low doses equivalent to what many people in the United States have in their drinking water, Hamilton said.
