A survey was made of representative farms in the flue-cured tobacco producing areas of North Carolina to determine the As content of the soil and the cured tobacco. Since no arsenical sprays were used on the tobacco, the As in the leaf is a measure of that absorbed from the soil. Arsenic in the soil was found to range from 1 to 5 ppm with an average for all areas of 2.8 ppm. This value is close to the 4 ppm reported by Greaves (1913), for a virgin soil and thus suggests no measurable increase from the previous use of arsenicals in the arsenic content of soils used for tobacco. The arsenic concentration found in the cured leaf is from 0.5 to 3.5 ppm. The average for all leaf samples is 1.5 ppm. Results from this survey and those of field experiments (Small and McCants, 1962) do not support Satterlee's hypothesis that tobacco can be expected to continue to contain high levels of As because of absorption from the soil. To the contrary, the evidence is that the average concentration of As in soils used for the production of tobacco in North Carolina is approximately 3 ppm and As from soil sources in the cured leaf is less than 2 ppm.

(Full article published with kind permission from "Tobacco International")