Arsenic in water

[Chaerie]

I have arsenic in my well water. It's 20 ppm, the acceptable range is 10ppm or less, so it's not a crazy ton. We filter our drinking water, but... Is it ok to give livestock water with a little arsenic? Will it be safe to eat the chickens and their eggs?

 

[Alaskan]

I tried googling....yeah, interesting how little info is out there.

So....not sure...

The only good article I found said pets should also not drink water over 10ppm.

 

[DesertBird]

I'm not sure, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you can filter it, that'd probably be your best bet. Especially with the smaller size of chickens and the elevated levels of arsenic, it might slowly kill them? Not sure.

 

[Champagne-blond]

I agree with BlockedRelic06. If 10ppm is enough to slowly kill a dog, then I'd be extremely cautious with 20ppm. My rule is, only give your birds water that you would drink yourself.

 

[Alaskan]

I agree with BlockedRelic06. If 10ppm is enough to slowly kill a dog, then I'd be extremely cautious with 20ppm. My rule is, only give your birds water that you would drink yourself.

10ppm is completely safe for humans to drink.

So 20ppm might be fine for animals with short lives anyway....not enough time to build up in the system.....

However, I just can't find any good info.

 

[Chaerie]

Ok. Gonna have to make it work. Filtering my chicken water is a huge big PITA and I was able to find a report stating below 25ppm is acceptable for livestock. Plus, if we get goats or sheep.... Yeah making RO water for everything is just out of the realm of sanity for this busy gal!!

 

[Alaskan]

Ok. Gonna have to make it work. Filtering my chicken water is a huge big PITA and I was able to find a report stating below 25ppm is acceptable for livestock. Plus, if we get goats or sheep.... Yeah making RO water for everything is just out of the realm of sanity for this busy gal!!

Exactly.

Also, low level side effects don't look too bad.

 

[Alaskan]

Oh...maybe set up a rainbarrel on any gutters you might have. So they at least aren't on 100% well water.

 

[lazy gardener]

I like Alaskan's thinking. a rain barrel with a filtration system that includes biological and particle filtration would provide safe water for them. You can do a google search for home made filtration systems. It should take you about 2 weeks to get the filter seeded with the nitrobacter bacteria to take care of the biological aspect of it. I don't know if you could filter out arsenic with charcoal. It might be worth looking at.

 

[DesertBird]

I agree with Alaskan and lazy gardener. Anything you can do to cut down on their arsenic intake would probably be immensely helpful for them. Maybe there's also a cheap but effective product that's able to cut down on the amount of arsenic in water, like a powder or something? Probably wishful thinking. lol