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Soil: Earth’s Lifeline
Published in Stanley Manahan, Environmental Chemistry, 2017
Another source of arsenic in soil has been from the application to soil of chicken manure from chickens fed with feed containing organoarsenic compounds added to prevent disease (coccidiosis), stimulate growth, enhance the efficiency of feed utilization, increase egg production, and improve meat appearance. Three of these, roxarsone, carbarsone, and arsanilic acid, were discontinued by 2011 after the US Food and Drug Administration found elevated levels of arsenic in the livers of chickens to which the compounds had been administered. A fourth organoarsenic compound, nitarsone, was still allowed for limited use as the only effective treatment for Blackhead disease (histomoniasis), which especially afflicts young turkeys.
Organoarsenical compounds: Occurrence, toxicology and biotransformation
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2020
Jian Chen, Luis D. Garbinski, Barry Rosen, Jun Zhang, Ping Xiang, Lena Q. Ma
Unlike previous Aso compounds, aromatic Aso compounds are not natural products as they are chemically synthetized and released from anthropogenic activities. Aromatic organoarsenic compounds (AOCs), including roxarsone, p-arsanilic acid, nitarsone and carbarsone, have been widely used as additives in animal feeding operations to control parasites and promote growth, including chicken and swine (Chen & Huang, 2012; Saucedo-Velez et al., 2017). Like arsenobetaine, more than 90% of AOCs fed to poultry are excreted chemically unchanged in feces and urine because AOCs do not get metabolized in animal bodies. Therefore, the As concentrations in animal bodies (e.g., meat, tissue and body fat) and animal wastes can be elevated, leading to their ban in Europe in 1998. Due to elevated As levels in animal meat, their application as feed additives was banned in the US in 2013. However, they are still widely used in developing countries including Argentina, Brazil, India and China (Fei et al., 2018).