0141G33 



reported by Kreuzer et al . (1975) or the U.S. Department of 

 Agriculture (USDA 1975), but these later surveys included older 

 animals of uncertain age and background. The maximum ranges found 

 in the literature for cattle kidney and liver tissue were 0.075 to 

 4 ppm (Penumarthy et al . 1980, Baxter et al . 1983) and 0.034 to 

 0.84 ppm (Penumarthy et al. 1980, Doyle and Spaulding 1978) re- 

 spectively. It should be noted that both maximums were converted 

 from the reported dry weight figures using the conversions found 

 by Munshower and Neuman (1979). The highest apparently nontoxic 

 concentration of cadmium in cattle kidney tissue found in the 

 reviewed literature is the 57 ppm (dry weight basis) found by 

 Baxter et al. (1982). The effect of 19 ppm cadmium in cattle 

 kidney tissue (Sharma et al. 1982) was not clearly stated. 

 Penumarthy et al. (1980) found cattle background kidney and liver 

 cadmium levels of 0.075 to 2.500 ppm and 0.034 to 0.430 ppm, re- 

 spectively. Similar values for horses were given as 0.840 to 

 5.000 ppm and 0.830 to 4.100 ppm. Because of the difficulty and 

 expense involved in the acquisition of liver or kidney samples 

 from animals in the field, a survey of animal hair may be a more 

 realistic approach to determining cadmium exposure in a large 

 group of animals. Urine may have some future potential, but 

 little background data are available for interpretation. Cadmium 

 in feces may provide an estimate of dietary intake (Chaney 1980). 



2.2.2 Livestock cadmium hazard levels 



Documented cadmium levels in livestock fluids, tissues and 

 hair are presented in Table 8, 9, 10 and 11. Cadmium hazard 

 levels were derived from this data base. 



2.2.2.1 Toxic cadmium hazard levels for cattle 

 Cadmium levels in cattle blood are not a good diagnostic 

 indicator of cadmium toxicity (Puis 1981) (Table 12). Powell et 

 al. (1964) found the blood cadmium level in bull calves on a diet 

 of 2560 ppm cadmium (toxic) to be <0.10 ppm. This value was 

 within the same order of magnitude as most background blood 



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