Engineering Commons^™

Cactus Mucilage-Assisted Heavy Metal Separation: Design And Implementation, Dawn Iona Fox

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Natural contamination of groundwater by arsenic (As) has become a critical public health threat in many parts of the world. The well-known regions associated with As contamination of groundwater are Bangladesh and West Bengal, India where approximately 100 million people are exposed to high levels of arsenic by drinking arsenic-contaminated groundwater and about 35 million are already affected. Long-term drinking of arsenic-contaminated water leads to arsenicosis, which is characterized by cancers of the skin, organ disease and certain other types of cancer. Affected developing communities are at higher risk because they may not have access to conventional water treatment facilities. …