The effects of heat and mass transfer on blood flow through a tapered artery with overlapping stenosis are analyzed in this article. An appropriate mathematical relation is used for the geometry of the stenosed artery. The rheological behavior of streaming blood in the artery is characterized by the Cross non-Newtonian model. The constitutive equation in conjunction with equation of motion is used to analyze momentum transfer while the heat and mass transfer effects are modeled through heat conduction and diffusion equations, respectively. The simplified form of momentum, heat and mass transfer equations are obtained by employing the mild stenosis condition. The emerging unsteady non-linear coupled partial differential equations are solved numerically using a well-tested explicit finite difference scheme. The influence of various emerging parameters on blood flow and on heat and mass transfer is evaluated via various plots. The instantaneous global behavior of temperature and concentration is also illustrated through contour plots for pertinent parameters. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.