Measurement of Low Levels of Arsenic Exposure: A Comparison of Water and Toenail Concentrations

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Abstract
A study was conducted to evaluate toenail arsenic concentrations as a biologic marker of drinking water arsenic exposure. Study subjects were controls in a US population-based case-control study of nonmelanoma skin cancer, randomly selected from drivers' license records (those r) between water and nail arsenic was 0.65 (p < 0.001) among those with water arsenic concentrations of 1 μg/liter or higher and 0.08 (p = 0.31) among those with concentrations below 1 μg/liter (overall r = 0.46, p < 0.001). Our data suggest that toenail samples provide a useful biologic marker for quantifying low-level arsenic exposure.