Arsenic Contamination in South Asian Regions: Sources, Challenges and Vision for the Future

The contamination of groundwater due to a heavy metal such as arsenic, causes a risk to the availability of clean drinking water around the world. South Asian regions, specifically Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan are reported to be the worst hit of arsenic contamination, with the rural and the distant areas being almost totally relying on arsenic contaminated water. The arsenic contamination of ground water reservoir, is the outcome of various natural and anthropogenic sources, prompting antagonistic impacts on the climate and human well-being. Reliability on such arsenic-loaded water prompts serious health issues such as arsenicosis, skin cancer, cardiac disorders, and respiratory disorders, etc. It has become the necessity of the time to outline the economic and reliable techniques which all the nations whether developed or developing, can successfully adopt for the deduction of arsenic contamination from water. The purpose of this study is to explain the crises caused by naturally occurring arsenic in ground water, challenges faced by humans due to widespread arsenic in South Asian region and modern technologies to mitigate this impact. This article also highlights the importance of the improvements required in the research field for assessments and analysis of drinking water resources, and the development of new methods for the mitigation of chronic toxicity of arsenic.