Back to Search
Start Over
China's Ban on Phenylarsonic Feed Additives, A Major Step toward Reducing the Human and Ecosystem Health Risk from Arsenic
- Source :
- Environ Sci Technol
- Publication Year :
- 2019
-
Abstract
- Phenylarsonic feed additives were once widely used in poultry and swine production around the world, which brought significant and unnecessary health risk to consumers due to elevated residues of arsenic species in animal tissues. They also increased the risk to ecosystems via releases of inorganic arsenic through their environmental transformation. Out of concern for the negative impacts on human and ecosystem health, China, one of the world's largest poultry and swine producing countries, recently banned the use of phenylarsonic feed additives in food animal production. This ban, if fully enforced, will result in reduction of approximately 1160 cancer cases per year from the consumption of chicken meat alone, and avoid an annual economic loss of nearly 0.6 billion CNY according to our risk analysis. Furthermore, the inventory of anthropogenic arsenic emissions in China will be cut by approximately one-third with the phase-out of phenylarsonic feed additives. This ban is also expected to lead to significant reduction in the accumulation of arsenic in the soils of farmlands fertilized by poultry and swine wastes and, consequently, lower the accumulation of arsenic in food crops grown on them, which could have even greater public health benefits. But effective enforcement of the ban is crucial, and it will require detailed supervision of veterinary drug production and distribution, and enhanced surveillance of animal feeds and food products. Furthermore, control of other major anthropogenic sources of arsenic is also necessary to better protect human health and the environment.
- Subjects :
- Risk analysis
medicine.medical_specialty
China
Animal feed
Swine
chemistry.chemical_element
010501 environmental sciences
01 natural sciences
Poultry
Article
Arsenic
Environmental protection
medicine
Environmental Chemistry
Animals
Humans
Veterinary drug
Ecosystem
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Ecosystem health
Public health
General Chemistry
Animal Feed
chemistry
Environmental science
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15205851
- Volume :
- 53
- Issue :
- 21
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Environmental sciencetechnology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....536ccb53e172f524afdf4d7cdff40b55