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INTRODUCTION Anxiety over arsenic (As) is understandable, and frequently justifiable. Arsenic compounds were the preferred homicidal and suicidal agents during the Middle Ages, and arsenicals have been regarded largely in terms of their poisonous characteristics in the nonscientific literature (NAS 1977). Data collected on animals, including man, indicate that inorganic arsenic can cross the placenta and produce mutagenic, teratogenic, and carcinogenic effects in offspring (Nagymajtenyi et al. 1985). Correlations between elevated atmospheric arsenic levels and mortalities from cancer, bronchitis, and pneumonia were established in an epidemiological study in England and Wales, where ?eaths from respiratory cancer were increased at air concentrations >3 ug As/m (NRCC 1978). Chronic arsenical poisoning, including skin cancer and a gangrenous condition of the hands and feet called Blackfoot's disease, has occurred in people from several communities in Europe, South America, and Taiwan that were exposed to elevated concentrations of arsenic in drinking water (EPA 1980). More recently, about 12,000 Japanese infants were poisoned (128 deaths) after consuming dry milk containing 15 to 24 mg inorganic As/kg, which originated from contaminated sodium phosphate used as a milk stabilizer. Fifteen years after exposure, the survivors sustained an elevated frequency of severe hearing loss and brain wave abnormalities (Pershagen and Vahter 1979). Many reviews on ecotoxicological aspects of arsenic in the environment are available; particularly useful are those by Woolson (1975), NAS (1977), NRCC (1978), Pershagen and Vahter (1979), EPA (1980, 1985), Hood (1985), and Andreae (1986). These authorities agree on six points. 1. Arsenic is a relatively common element, and is present in air, water, soil, plants, and in all living tissues. 2. Arsenicals have been used in medicine as chemotherapeutics since 400 BC, and organoarsenicals were used extensively for this purpose until about 1945, with no serious effects when judiciously administered. 3. Large quantities of arsenicals are released into the environment as a result of industrial and especially agricultural activities, and these may pose potent ecological dangers. 4. Exposure of humans and wildlife to arsenic may occur through air (emissions from smelters, coal-fired power plants, herbicide sprays), water (mine tailings runoff, smelter wastes, natural mineralization), and food (especially seafoods). 5. Chronic exposure to arsenicals by way of the air, diet, and other routes have been associated with liver, kidney, and heart damage; hearing loss; brain wave abnormalities;