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Taming toxicity

Taming toxicity while thinking of West Bengal and Bangladesh, our mind conjures up images of people facing the menace of toxic and insidious arsenic. But a new study by Chinese researchers could soon change these. The study by Wang Wuyi and colleagues from the Institute of Geographical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, shows that therapy with an element called selenium might help reverse the organ and tissue damage caused due to the prolonged intake of arsenic-laced drinking water (The Telegraph , December 3, 2001).

Selenium is a free-radical scavenging the anti-oxidant that protects the body from toxic products of routine metabolic processes. It can be obtained from the body parts of animals, seafood and vegetables. During their study, the Chinese researchers proved that selenium therapy is able to decrease the concentration of accumulated arsenic in blood, hair and urine, as well as reverse tissue damage. The researchers selected two groups of arsenic victims for their experiments. The first group, comprising 100 people, were given 100-200 micrograms of selenium for 14 months. The second group consisting of 86 people were given starch tablets as a placebo. The groups were also supplied arsenic-free fresh water.

A few days later the researchers found that members of both the groups had typical signs of arsenic poisoning

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