Dangerous arsenic levels may be lurking in California prison water: study
Incarcerated Californians — and those who live in neighboring rural communities — may be exposed to dangerous levels of arsenic in their drinking water, a new study has found. Arsenic concentrations in the water supply of the Kern Valley State Prison and three nearby Central Valley communities exceeded regulatory limits for months or even years at a time, according to the study, published on Wednesday in Environmental Health Perspectives. To draw their conclusions, the authors combed through 20 years of water quality data from the prison and the adjacent communities of Allensworth, McFarland and Delano, where groundwater aquifers contain unhealthy levels of naturally occurring arsenic.