Overview
This correspondence piece in Environmental Health Perspectives comprises two items: (1) a letter by Tamar Lasky responding to Nachman et al. 2013 (the primary market basket study of roxarsone, inorganic arsenic, and other arsenic species in US chicken), and (2) the formal response from Nachman et al. The Lasky letter notes that arsenic levels in chicken remain high despite earlier 2004 reporting (Lasky et al. 2004), attributing this to the complex multi-agency regulatory structure for food animal drug residues involving FDA, USDA FSIS, EPA, CDC, USDA ARS, and USDA AMS. The Nachman response confirms that arsenic-based drugs (roxarsone, nitarsone) increase inorganic arsenic levels in chicken meat and calls for banning arsenical drugs in food animal production; it acknowledges the USDA FSIS National Residue Program’s role and notes that the current arsenic standard for meat was set before 1963 and applies to total arsenic rather than inorganic arsenic.
Key numbers
This correspondence discusses but does not independently report concentration values; the primary data are in Nachman et al. 2013 (doi: 10.1289/ehp.1206245): roxarsone and iAs in US market basket chicken samples. Key regulatory context from this correspondence: current FDA arsenic standard for meat was set before 1963; standard applies to total arsenic, not inorganic arsenic; NRP is designed to detect violations above allowed levels using categorical (violation/no-violation) analysis rather than continuous-variable estimation; US per capita chicken consumption increased over the decade preceding 2013. At time of correspondence: roxarsone sale suspended; nitarsone (similar arsenical drug) still sold and used in turkey production.
Note: this correspondence explicitly calls for arsenic standards that are species-specific (iAs vs tAs), which aligns with the wiki’s non-negotiable speciation rule.
Methods (brief)
Correspondence; no primary analytical data. References Lasky et al. 2004 (EHP 112:18-21) and Nachman et al. 2013 (EHP 121:818-824). See Nachman et al. 2013 for market basket study methodology.
Implications
Certification: the regulatory gap this correspondence identifies — total arsenic standard set before 1963, not species-specific, inadequate for inorganic arsenic — is relevant to the wiki’s coverage of US arsenic regulations in poultry. Nitarsone use in turkey continued past 2013.
Courses: useful for illustrating multi-agency complexity in US food safety regulation for veterinary drug residues, and for the policy relevance of iAs vs tAs speciation distinctions in meat regulation.
App: chicken and poultry are relevant food matrices for arsenic contamination; this correspondence provides regulatory context for arsenic species in poultry.
Wiki pages updated on ingest
Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 6 sections added; narrative text revised |