Occurrence of Monomethylarsonous Acid in Urine of Humans Exposed to Inorganic Arsenic

Monomethylarsonous acid (MMAIII) has been detected for the first time in the urine of some humans exposed to inorganic arsenic in their drinking water. Our experiments have dealt with subjects in Romania who have been exposed to 2.8, 29, 84, or 161 μg of As/L in their drinking water. In the latter t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Chemical research in toxicology Vol. 13; no. 8; pp. 693 - 697
Main Authors:	Aposhian, H. Vasken, Gurzau, Eugen S, Le, X. Chris, Gurzau, Anca, Healy, Sheila M, Lu, Xiufen, Ma, Mingsheng, Yip, Luke, Zakharyan, Robert A, Maiorino, Richard M, Dart, Richard C, Tircus, Mihai G, Gonzalez-Ramirez, Diego, Morgan, Daniel L, Avram, Dana, Aposhian, Mary M
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States American Chemical Society 01-08-2000
Subjects:	Adolescent Adult Aged Arsenic - urine Environmental Exposure - analysis Environmental Monitoring Female Humans Male Middle Aged monomethylarsonous acid Organometallic Compounds - urine Romania Water Supply - analysis Romania
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Summary:	Monomethylarsonous acid (MMAIII) has been detected for the first time in the urine of some humans exposed to inorganic arsenic in their drinking water. Our experiments have dealt with subjects in Romania who have been exposed to 2.8, 29, 84, or 161 μg of As/L in their drinking water. In the latter two groups, MMAIII was 11 and 7% of the urinary arsenic while the monomethylarsonic acid (MMAV) was 14 and 13%, respectively. Of our 58 subjects, 17% had MMAIII in their urine. MMAIII was not found in urine of any members of the group with the lowest level of As exposure. If the lowest-level As exposure group is excluded, 23% of our subjects had MMAIII in their urine. Our results indicate that (a) future studies concerning urinary arsenic profiles of arsenic-exposed humans must determine MMAIII concentrations, (b) previous studies of urinary profiles dealing with humans exposed to arsenic need to be re-examined and re-evaluated, and (c) since MMAIII is more toxic than inorganic arsenite, a re-examination is needed of the two hypotheses which hold that methylation is a detoxication process for inorganic arsenite and that inorganic arsenite is the major cause of the toxicity and carcinogenicity of inorganic arsenic.
Bibliography:	istex:B3E47D8FF5B0700414808E5C846F07CEC39F1D61 ark:/67375/TPS-FNMH1F4B-D ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23
ISSN:	0893-228X 1520-5010
DOI:	10.1021/tx000114o