Arsenic

Thirteen officials in central China have been punished after a chemical company contaminated a river with arsenic, state media reported. A local court sentenced Liu Gaili, a former environmental protection bureau official, to two years in jail, the official New China News Agency said, quoting the Shangqiu city government in Henan province. The report said 12 other officials were either sacked or given administrative punishments. The officials were punished after a section of the Dasha river was found contaminated by arsenic in August.

Beside a field of rolling tumbleweed in this remote Central Valley town, the state opened its newest prison in 2005 with a modern design, cutting-edge security features and a serious environmental problem. The drinking water pumped from two wells at Kern Valley State Prison contained arsenic, a known cause of cancer, in amounts far higher than a federal safety standard soon to take effect.

For generations, bottled mineral water from the town of Jermuk has been a kind of national tonic in Armenia, proudly sipped like a fine chardonnay in California or taken for its perceived medicinal value, like chicken soup. As the Armenian population here has grown, demand for the water has grown with it.

Just months after a new standard took effect to limit levels of arsenic in drinking water, Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) will introduce a measure today to suspend enforcement of the rule for small water systems, including more than 100 in California. Craig spokesman Dan Whiting said a moratorium on civil penalties was needed to ease the financial burden on water systems that serve 10,000 customers or less. "These are extremely small communities who just don't have the resources," Whiting said.

Re "Drink up -- assuming you like arsenic, that is," Dec. 29 Poisoning prisoners with drinking water laden with arsenic is unconscionable, inhumane and, considering the potential deferred health costs and civil liability, economic suicide for the state. Worse perhaps is selective poisoning by gender. At the California Institution for Women in Chino, the state spends $480,000 a year for bottled water, while at the nearby California Institution for Men, inmates drink contaminated water.

Eating chicken may account for more of your exposure to poisonous arsenic -- also found in drinking water, dust and some other foods -- than previously realized. Arsenic is an approved animal-feed supplement used to kill intestinal parasites in chickens. Most of it leaves the chicken's body as waste, but some stays behind, researchers reported in January's Environmental Health Perspectives. Researchers with the U.S.

When May 3 rolls around it will be "a full 18 months before the presidential election" ("Political Reality Television," editorial, April 22). By the time we get to the actual election, Iraq will be old news and the nation will be focused on other things, like the tanking economy, ballooning deficits and arsenic in the drinking water. The Bushies will have to do some very fancy dancing on TV to get around those embarrassments. The Democrats' call may very well be, "It's not the war, it's the economy, stupid!"

State health officials said that arsenic probably was the cause of several illnesses at a church gathering and that it may have contributed to the death of a 78-year-old man. State Health Director Dora Anne Mills said a preliminary analysis identified arsenic as "a probable causative agent" in Sunday's outbreak after services at the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church in northern Maine. Five people remained hospitalized Tuesday.

A container that had held arsenic was found Wednesday in a church where the toxic metal is suspected of sickening a dozen people and of contributing to the death of a 78-year-old man. State police investigators said they planned to interview every member of the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church in this town of 650 in the northern part of the state. Five of those who became sick after Sunday's services were still too ill to talk with detectives; at least three were in critical condition.

A 78-year-old parishioner who died after drinking arsenic-laced coffee at a church gathering was deliberately killed, state police said. Police spokesman Steve McCausland said the arsenic that killed Walter Morrill and left more than a dozen others sick was in the coffee they all drank at a Lutheran church in New Sweden, about 300 miles north of Portland.