High Levels of Arsenic Found in Children's Urine, You'll Never Guess Where it Came From

A story reported in Grist and first published in the Salt Lake Tribune said that alarming amounts of arsenic were found in two Utah children's urine. The girl's urine tested 50 percent above what's considered safe and the boy's tested 75 percent above acceptable levels.

The culprit turned out to be the chicken feed. Find out how the kids were exposed to such high levels of arsenic. Two kids, who worried officials because of excessively high levels of arsenic found in their urine, were found to be ingesting the arsenic as a result of their backyard chickens. Let's be clear that it wasn't the act of raising the backyard birds that caused the arsenic build up; it was rather, the roxarsone, a form of arsenic, found in their chicken feed. Chickens ingested the feed and their eggs were laced with the toxin.

But really, this is nothing new. A 2004 study from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy showed that more than half of the store-bought chicken and fast-food chicken contained elevated levels of arsenic. Roughly 2.2 million pounds of it are being used every year to produce 43 billion pounds of poultry. According to the Washington Post, the poultry industry has been using roxarsone to fight parasites and increase growth in chickens since it was approved by the FDA in 1944. Read More