Aquatic Environmental Conditions Responsible for Kashin-Beck Disease in Ruo'ergai County, Sichuan Province, China

This paper focuses on the aquatic environmental conditions responsible for kashin-beck disease (KBD) within the Ruo'ergai County of Sichuan Province. A total of 38 groundwater and surface water samples were collected during September 2008. The water quality data sets in this research include major cations, anions, and trace elements. The results indicate that the drinking water in the KBD area has relatively low contents in both the major and trace elements and people drinking the surface water there are more likely to become KBD victims. Combined with the hydrological and hydrochemical evidence, it reveals that the KBD mainly results from the abnormal contents of multiple constituents in the drinking water. The multivariate analytical method factor analysis (FA) results further indicate that the KBD prevalence in the study area has close relationship with P, F, Se, Mn contents in drinking water and the lower the P, F, Se, and Mn contents are, the more the KBD cases are invloved.