POPs in Chicken Eggs from Hotspots in China

Eggs have been found to be sensitive indicators of persistent organic pollutant (POP) contamination in soils or dust and are an important exposure pathway from soil pollution to humans, and eggs from contaminated areas can readily lead to exposures with exceeding thresholds for the protection of human health (Van Eijkeren, Zeilmaker et al. 2006, Hoogenboom, ten Dam et al. 2014, Piskorska-Pliszczynska, Mikolajczyk et al. 2014). Chickens and eggs might therefore be ideal “active samplers” and indicator species for evaluation of the level of contamination of sampled areas by POPs, particularly by dioxins (PCDD/Fs) and PCBs. Based on this assumption, we have chosen sampling of free range chicken eggs and their analyses for selected POPs as one of the monitoring tools within the project ‘‘Strengthening the capacity of pollution victims and civil society organizations to increase chemical safety in China’‘.

The data and analyses of free range chicken eggs discussed in this report were obtained during a 2 1/4 year-long joint project of three NGOs: IPEN (Sweden), Green Beagle (China) and Arnika – Toxics and Waste Programme (Czech Republic). They were obtained from local people and/or sampled by Chinese NGOs Nature University and Green Beagle during field visits in 2013 and 2014 from seven different localities in China.

Originally produced in 2015, this report was updated in 2016.