Presence of arsenic in agricultural products from arsenic-endemic areas and strategies to reduce arsenic intake in rural villages

About 100 million rural people in Asia are exposed to arsenic (As)-polluted drinking water and agricultural products. Total and inorganic arsenic (t-As and i-As) intake mainly depend on the quality of drinking and cooking waters, and amounts of seafood and rice consumed. The main problems occur in countries with poor water quality where the population depends on rice for their diet, and their t-As and i-As intake is high as a result of growing and cooking rice in contaminated water. Workable solutions to remove As from water and breeding rice cultivars with low As accumulation are being sought. In the meantime, simple recommendations for processing and cooking foods will help to reduce As intake. For instance, cooking using high volumes of As-free water may be a cheap way of reducing As exposure in rural populations. It is necessary to consider the effects of cooking and processing on t-As and i-As to obtain a realistic view of the risks associated with intake of As in Asendemic areas.

The Private Finance Initiative: An Evolving Research Agenda

This article considers the development of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and contends that it is now deeply embedded and intertwined in policies to renew and modernize the United Kingdom's public services. After briefly reviewing prior research based upon the themes proposed by Broadbent and Laughlin (1999), this article suggests a new research agenda to reflect how the PFI has matured and developed in recent years.

Accountability and Value for Money in Private Finance Initiative Contracts

Within the context of New Public Management (NPM), successive UK governments have claimed that PFI projects provide more accountability, and arguably, more value for money (VFM) than conventional procurement for the public (HM Treasury 1995, 2000, 2003a and 2003b). However, recent empirical research in the UK on PFI has indicated its potential limitations for accountability and VFM (Broadbent, Gill and Laughlin, 2004; Edwards, Shaoul, Stafford and Arblaster, 2004; Shaoul, 2005; and Ismail and Pendlebury, 2006) albeit these are based on either published accounts or a limited number of key stakeholders. This paper attempts to partially redress this gap in the literature by presenting an interesting case of the impact of PFI on accountability and VFM in Northern Ireland's education sector. The findings of this research, based on forty two interviews with a wide range of key stakeholders, suggest that stakeholders have different and often conflicting expectations and the actual PFI accountability and VFM benefits are much more obfuscated than those claimed in Government publications.