0141606 



and Thompson 1971, Selby et al. 1977). Very few cases of natural 

 arsenic poisoning have been reported. Fitch et al. (1939) studied 

 the poisoning of livestock in the Waiotapu Valley in New Zealand 

 and attributed it to arsenic from geothermal sources. Many cases 

 of chronic arsenic poisoning may be partially masked by the 

 effects of other heavy metal poisoning (especially lead, copper, 

 cadmium and zinc) usually associated with arsenic in metallurgical 

 mining, smelting and refining industries. It has been suggested 

 that some tolerance to arsenic is acquired by livestock with 

 chronic exposure (McCulloch and St. John 1940) . 



A considerable difference exists between the effective 

 toxicity of various forms of arsenic. Levels of total arsenic 

 found in marine invertebrates and fish have been found to be toxic 

 to aquatic organisms and fish when the arsenic was present as 

 arsenic trioxide (Schroeder and Balassa 1966). Bucy et al. (1955) 

 found differences in the toxicity of organic arsenic compounds to 

 sheep, with 3-ni tro-4-hydr oxyphenylarsonic acid the least toxic. 

 The study found arsanilic acid to be less toxic than potassium 

 arsenite and that the latter was not very palatable to lambs. All 

 arsenic concentrations in livestock substances have been reported 

 as total arsenic. The arsenic hazard levels presented in this 

 document are thus based on total arsenic. 



Tables 1-4 list background and elevated arsenic levels in 

 livestock fluids, h^ir and tissues. The highest concentration of 

 arsenic in tissues has been found in the spleen, liver and kidneys 

 (Peoples 1964, Edwards and Clay 1979, Rosiles 1977, Knapp et al. 

 1977). Cattle that have not been exposed to arsenic have kidney 

 levels from 0.0 (Peoples 1964) to 0.25 ppm (wet weight) (Dickinson 

 1972). Doyle and Spaulding (1978) reported a value of 0.06 ppm 

 for 100 cattle tested by the National Bureau of Standards. One 

 hundred and ninety Australian cattle tested by Flanjak and Lee 

 (1979) had a mean value of 0.018 ppm for kidney tissue. Normal 

 arsenic levels in cattle kidney have been given as less than 0.5 

 and 0.15 to 0.4 ppm by the National Research Council (NRC, 1977) 

 and Puis (1981), respectively. Mean background levels for sheep 

 kidney (n=440) were found to be 0.03 ppm by Spaulding (1975) and 



