Fate of arsenite and arsenate in flooded and not flooded soils of southwest Bangladesh irrigated with arsenic contaminated water

Abstract

In Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, tons of arsenic are added every year to wide extensions of agricultural soils after irrigation with arsenic polluted groundwater, and the fate of the added arsenic in these water-soil environments is not yet clear. This work was aimed to investigate the accumulation and potential release of arsenite [As(III)] and arsenate [As(V)] in two adjacent soils of Bangladesh, irrigated with arsenic contaminated groundwater and cultivated under flooded or not flooded conditions. Both soils showed a scarce As accumulation, in spite of a good adsorption capacity, higher for As(III) than for As(V). The poorly ordered Fe oxides dominated As adsorption in the topsoil of the flooded soil, whereas the crystalline forms were more important in the well aerated soil. A high percentage of the native arsenic was exchangeable with phosphate and the freshly added arsenate or arsenite were even much more mobile. In our experimental conditions, the high As mobility was not dependent on the surface coverage, and, in the flooded soil, 60-70% of the freshly added arsenite or arsenate were desorbed with an infinite sink method, while in the not flooded soil arsenate was less desorbed than arsenite. Depending on their characteristics, some soils, in particular when cultivated under flooded conditions, can represent only a temporary sink for the added As, that can be easily released to waters and possibly enter the food chain from the water-soil system.

Keywords:

• Groundwater contamination
• Bangladesh
• arsenic
• soil
• adsorption
• mobility

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to Dr. Laura Calotescu for XRD analysis and to Ms. Paola Giacomini for analytical support. Rishilpi Development Project, Bangldesh, is gratefully acknowledged for the logistic support in field. Funding of this work from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR), PRIN 2004 Project, is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

^§Not detectable.

^†Extracted with dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate.

^‡ Extracted with ammonium oxalate.