TY - JOUR A1 - Bandow, Nicole A1 - Simon, Franz-Georg T1 - Significance of cadmium from artists' paints to agricultural soils and the food chain JF - Environmental Science Europe N2 - Background: An Annex XV restriction dossier for cadmium in artists’ paints was submitted by an EU member state to the European Chemicals Agency ECHA. By cleaning used brushes under the tap cadmium can enter the food chain via waste water treatment and subsequent agricultural application of the sewage sludge. It was estimated that 110 kg Cd per year is spread on agricultural land via this exposure route. Other sources of Cd amount to almost 120 tons per year. Results: The mobility of Cd from pigments was studied in a field-like scenario by leaching experiments using soil samples amended with sewage sludge and spiked with Cd pigments in percolation columns. The redox conditions were confirmed to be the decisive factor for the release of Cd. The release of Cd from artists’ paints was in most cases 1% or lower in the experiments performed. Conclusions: Application of sewage sludge containing Cd from artist paints does not increase the amount of Cd leached from this soils. Furthermore the quantity of Cd from artists’ paints calculated in the restriction dossier is negligible compared to other sources of Cd to agricultural soil. Therefore ECHA did not consider the proposed restriction to be the most appropriate EU wide measure to address the negligible level of risk. KW - REACH regulation KW - Sewage sludge KW - Fertilizer KW - Leaching test PY - 2016 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-358261 DO - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-016-0077-6 SN - 2190-4715 VL - 28 IS - 12 SP - 1 EP - 10 AN - OPUS4-35826 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -