In our article (Xue et al. 2010), we cited Petito Boyce et al. (2008) based on their major conclusion stated at the end of their abstract that, “typical and high-end background exposures to inorganic arsenic in U.S. populations do not present elevated risks of carcinogenicity.” We agree with Petito Boyce et al. that we “missed an opportunity to provide additional support for” our overall conclusions, and very much appreciate that they have offered this detailed comparison showing the agreement between our modeling results.
Our discussion of Petito Boyce et al. (2008)’s conclusions was intended to bolster the need to develop a more comprehensive analysis of the sources of inorganic arsenic exposure, not to suggest that their exposure analysis was incomplete or inaccurate.
References
- Petito Boyce CP, Lewis AS, Sax SN, Eldan M, Cohen SM, Becj BD. Probabilistic analysis of human health risks associated with background concentrations of inorganic arsenic: use of a margin of exposure approach. Hum Ecol Risk Assess. 2008;14:1159–1201. [Google Scholar]
- Xue J, Zartarian V, Wang SW, Liu, SV, Georgopoulos P. Probabilistic modeling of dietary arsenic exposure and dose and evaluation with 2003–2004 NHANES data. Environ Health Perspect. 2010;118:345–350. doi: 10.1289/ehp.0901205. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]