LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Arsenic: Compounds
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Arsenic and its compounds are poisonous. They have been used to make rat poison and some insecticides. Small amounts of arsenic are added to germanium to make transistors. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) can produce laser light directly from electricity.
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Arsenic is a naturally occurring element, considered a heavy metal. The pure form of arsenic is not commonly found in the environment. However, arsenic is found in naturally formed and man-made compounds.
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Arsenic alone is a poison and can cause cancer, but arsenic-containing compounds have been used medically for more than 2,000 years. Ninteenth-century U.S. doctors tried arsenic to treat leukemia, but abandoned it with the discovery of radiation and chemotherapy.
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Arsenic compounds are mainly used in agriculture, forestry, and industrial processes. Arsenic tri-oxide is used in manufacturing of agricultural chemicals (pesticides), glass and glassware, industrial chemicals, copper and lead alloys and pharmaceuticals.
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Arsenic was known in the form of certain of its compounds long before it was clearly recognized as a chemical element. In the 4th century BC Aristotle wrote of a substance called sandarache, now believed to have been the mineral realgar, a sulfide of arsenic.
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Arsenic compounds are subject to metabolic transformation. In both humans and animals, pentavalent arsenic compounds are reduced to trivalent forms and then methylated in the liver to less toxic methylarsinic acids (ATSDR, 1989).
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