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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 50(4)

Chromium poisoning in rats feeding on tannery residues

Rodrigo Carvalho Silva A , João Chrysostomo de Resende Júnior A C , Mary Suzan Varaschin A , Raimundo Vicente de Sousa A , Luiz Carlos Alves Oliveira B , João Luiz Pratti Daniel A , Ronaldo Francisco de Lima A and Anselmo Oliveira Moreiva A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Departamento de Medicina Veterinária, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Caixa Postal 3037, Lavras, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

B Departamento de Química, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Caixa Postal 3037, Lavras, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

C Corresponding author. Email: joaocrj@dmv.ufla.br

Animal Production Science 50(4) 293-299 https://doi.org/10.1071/AN09083
Submitted: 19 May 2009  Accepted: 11 March 2010   Published: 12 May 2010

Abstract

The Brazilian tannery industry produces annually an enormous amount of scraps and leather shavings impregnated with chromium due to the tanning process. Technologies have been developed to remove chromium from this material. The resultant residue from the chromium removal process is high in protein with a high digestibility, suggesting that this residue may be used to feed monogastric animals. However, due to the nature of this residue, there is a risk of chromium poisoning and the introduction of botulism. The aim of this work was to establish the risks of adding tannery residues to animal feeds, using rats as an experimental model.

Forty-eight Wistar rats were placed under eight treatments in a 2 by 4 factorial arrangement. The rats were fed over 60 days with a standard AIN-93 diet and the treatments consisted of replacing part of the diet with 0, 25, 37.5 or 50% of the chromium-tanned leather residue, in natura, known as ‘wet blue’, or the same percentages of this residue after chromium extraction. Industrial processing was able to remove 70–80% of the chromium from the residue. This high chromium level had a negative effect on the weight gain of the animals and caused lesions in the kidneys especially due to the chromium extraction material, suggesting that the removal process increases the biological activity of chromium, making it nefrotoxic. The gravity of this effect was directly proportional to the inclusion level. The results of this study indicate that until industrial processing is refined so that more of the chromium residue is removed, the use of the tannery residues in animal feeds is not safe.

Additional keywords: histopathology, leather, nefrotoxicity.


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