Utah study points to backyard chickens as source of elevated arsenic levels in two children

Backyard chickens are growing in popularity, but a study has concluded that they are to blame for elevated levels of arsenic in two children in Utah. "The trail eventually led [Christina] McNaughton, a toxicologist for the Utah Department of Health, to the family’s backyard chicken coop — along with the eggs that came out of it, the feed that went into the hens that laid them and, finally, widely used animal-feed additives containing arsenic," Judy  Fahys of The Salt Lake Tribune reports. "For everyone who has backyard chickens, this is an issue," McNaughton told Fahys.

"The Utah study goes far beyond a Mapleton chicken coop," Fahys writes. "The use of roxarsone and other arsenic-based additives in poultry and swine feed is at the center of a national controversy." David Wallinga, director of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, an organization that is petitioning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban the arsenic additives, told Fahys, "Because we’ve turned a blind eye to what we put in our animal feed, we’re putting our children at risk." The American Chemical Society reports about 70 percent of U.S. broilers were fed roxarsone, the most widely used arsenic-based additive, but "the poultry industry and regulators insist that virtually all of the additive is excreted," Fahys writes. McNaughton noted they "tested regular grocery store eggs, and they did not have any arsenic."

The Utah health agency has no position on the Institute's petition to ban arsenic additives, but "does stand by its findings — the first of their kind — that arsenic from feed is winding up in eggs and the people who eat them," Fahys writes. The two children in the study showed no signs of arsenic poisoning, but one had double the arsenic level deemed toxic and the other was 75 percent above the limit. Studies of the water and soil revealed they were within legal parameters for arsenic but examination of eggs from the backyard chickens revealed the likely source. After the chickens were given arsenic-free feed and the children stopped eating their eggs contamination levels declined. (Read more)