Grant received by Clemson University scientist

Novelists often employ arsenic poisoning as a dramatic tool to kill off a character. But in real life, chronic exposure at non-deadly levels can still cause a bevy of harm, resulting in loss of muscle mass, memory disruption, impaired sensory abilities, and damage to blood vessels and cancer. The World Health Organization estimates that 200-300 million people, including 13 million Americans, are exposed to arsenic above the safety threshold of 10 parts per billion in their drinking water every year. But this limit is based on cancer risk among adults. Children might be at risk at even lower levels. Even worse, arsenic can pass through a mother’s placenta to the fetus, resulting in reduced fetal growth and long-term effects in children. This prompted Lisa Bain, a Clemson University professor, to ask: How does chronic, low-level exposure to arsenic affect developing children, as well as sensitive embryos and fetuses? Bain specializes in toxicology in the College of Science’s biological sciences department and recently was awarded a $366,371 grant from the National Institutes of Health. Over a three-year period, Bain and several graduate students will trace how lab-raised cell cultures respond to just seven parts per billion of arsenic.