Department of Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2010 May;7(5):1970-83. doi: 10.3390/ijerph7051970. Epub 2010 Apr 28.
Arsenic is a naturally occurring toxic metal and its presence in food could be a potential risk to the health of both humans and animals. Prolonged ingestion of arsenic contaminated water may result in manifestations of toxicity in all systems of the body. Visual Analytics is a multidisciplinary field that is defined as the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. The concentrations of arsenic vary in foods making it impractical and impossible to provide regulatory limit for each food. This review article presents a case for the use of visual analytics approaches to provide comparative assessment of arsenic in various foods. The topics covered include (i) metabolism of arsenic in the human body; (ii) arsenic concentrations in various foods; (ii) factors affecting arsenic uptake in plants; (ii) introduction to visual analytics; and (iv) benefits of visual analytics for comparative assessment of arsenic concentration in foods. Visual analytics can provide an information superstructure of arsenic in various foods to permit insightful comparative risk assessment of the diverse and continually expanding data on arsenic in food groups in the context of country of study or origin, year of study, method of analysis and arsenic species.
砷是一种天然存在的有毒金属，其存在于食物中可能对人类和动物的健康构成潜在风险。长期摄入受砷污染的水可能会导致身体所有系统出现毒性表现。可视分析是一个多学科领域，其定义为通过交互式可视界面辅助分析推理的科学。由于食物中的砷含量不同，因此为每种食物制定监管限制既不实际也不可能。本文提出了使用可视分析方法来比较评估各种食物中砷的案例。涵盖的主题包括：（i）人体砷代谢；（ii）各种食物中的砷浓度；（iii）影响植物砷吸收的因素；（iv）可视分析简介；以及（v）可视分析在食物中砷浓度比较评估方面的益处。可视分析可以为各种食物中的砷提供信息结构，从而可以在研究或原产国、研究年份、分析方法和砷种类的背景下，对食物组中砷的多样化和不断扩大的数据进行有见地的比较风险评估。
