What is Arsenic?
What is Arsenic?
Arsenic is an element that is widely distributed in the earth's crust. Elemental arsenic is ordinarily a steel grey metal-like material that sometimes occurs naturally. However, arsenic is usually found in the environment combined with other elements such as oxygen, chlorine, and sulfur. Arsenic combined with these elements is called inorganic arsenic. Arsenic combined with carbon and hydrogen is referred to as organic arsenic. Understanding the difference between inorganic and organic arsenic is important because the organic forms are usually less harmful than the inorganic forms.
Most inorganic and organic arsenic compounds are white or colorless powders that do not evaporate. They have no smell, and most have no special taste. Thus, you usually cannot tell if arsenic is present in your food, water, or air.
Inorganic arsenic occurs naturally in soil and in many kinds of rock, especially in minerals and ores that contain copper or lead. When these ores are heated in smelters, most of the arsenic goes up the stack and enters the air as a fine dust. Smelters may collect this dust and take out the arsenic as arsenic trioxide. However, arsenic is no longer produced in the United States; all the arsenic we use is imported.
Presently about 90% of all arsenic produced is used as a preservative for wood to make it resistant to rotting and decay. The preservative is chromated copper arsenate (CCA) and the treated wood is referred to as "pressure-treated." In the past, arsenic was primarily used as a pesticide, primarily on cotton fields and in orchards. Inorganic arsenic compounds can no longer be used in agriculture. However, organic arsenicals, namely cacodylic acid, disodium methylarsenate (DSMA), and monosodium methylarsenate (MSMA) are still used as pesticides, principally on cotton. Small quantities of arsenic metal are added to other metals forming metal mixtures or alloys with improved properties. The greatest use of arsenic in alloys is in lead-acid batteries used in automobiles. Another important use of arsenic compounds is in semiconductors and light-emitting diodes.
Can Arsenic be Good for You?
Despite all the adverse health effects associated with inorganic arsenic exposure, there is some evidence that the small amounts of arsenic in the normal diet (10–50 ppb) may be beneficial to your health. For example, animals fed a diet with unusually low concentrations of arsenic did not gain weight normally. They also became pregnant less frequently than animals fed a diet containing a normal amount of arsenic. Further, the offspring from these animals tended to be smaller than normal, and some died at an early age. However, no cases of arsenic deficiency in humans have ever been reported.
This information has been obtained from the website of the:
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Division of Toxicology
1600 Clifton Road NE, Mailstop F-32
Atlanta, GA 30333