Arsenic poisoning constitutes a major threat to humans, causing various health problems. Almost everywhere across the world certain “hotspots” have been detected, putting in danger the local populations, due to the potential consumption of water or food contaminated with elevated concentrations of arsenic. According to the relevant studies, Asia shows the highest percentage of significantly contaminated sites, followed by North America, Europe, Africa, South America and Oceania. The presence of arsenic in ecosystems can originate from several natural or anthropogenic activities. Arsenic can be then gradually accumulated in different food sources, such as vegetables, rice and other crops, but also in seafood, etc., and in water sources (mainly in groundwater, but also to a lesser extent in surface water), potentially used as drinking-water supplies, provoking their contamination and therefore potential health problems to the consumers. This review reports the major areas worldwide that present elevated arsenic concentrations in food and water sources. Furthermore, it also discusses the sources of arsenic contamination at these sites, as well as selected treatment technologies, aiming to remove this pollutant mainly from the contaminated waters and thus the reduction and prevention of population towards arsenic exposure.

This study evaluates the efficiency of iron-based oxy-hydroxides to remove antimony from groundwater to meet the requirements of drinking water regulations. Results obtained by batch adsorption experiments indicated that the qualified iron oxy-hydroxide (FeOOH), synthesized at pH 4 for maintaining a high positive charge density (2.5 mmol OH⁻/g) achieved a residual concentration of Sb(III) below the EU drinking water regulation limit of 5 μg/L by providing an adsorption capacity of 3.1 mg/g. This is more than twice greater compared either to similar commercial FeOOHs (GFH, Bayoxide) or to tetravalent manganese feroxyhyte (Fe-MnOOH) adsorbents. In contrast, all tested adsorbents failed to achieve a residual concentration below 5 μg/L for Sb(V). The higher efficiency of the qualified FeOOH was confirmed by rapid small-scale column tests, since an adsorption capacity of 3 mg Sb(III)/g was determined at a breakthrough concentration of 5 μg/L. However, it completely failed to achieve Sb(V) concentrations below 5 μg/L even at the beginning of the column experiments. The results of leaching tests classified the spent qualified FeOOH to inert wastes. Considering the rapid kinetics of this process (i.e., 85% of total removal was performed within 10 min), the developed qualified adsorbent may be promoted as a prospective material for point-of-use Sb(III) removal from water in vulnerable communities, since the adsorbent’s cost was estimated to be close to 30 ± 3.4 €/10³ m³ for every 10 μg Sb(III)/L removed.