Feces vanadium

If vanadium is in the air, you can breathe it into your lungs. Most of it leaves your body in the air you breathe out, but some stays in your lungs. The part that isn t breathed out can go through your lungs and get into your bloodstream. You may eat or drink small amounts of vanadium in food and water. Most of this does not enter your bloodstream, but leaves your body in your feces. However, small amounts that you swallow can enter your bloodstream. Most of the vanadium that enters your bloodstream leaves your body quickly in the urine. If you get vanadium on your skin, it is unlikely that it will enter your body by passing through your skin. For more information about how vanadium enters and leaves your body, see Chapter 2. 

Since vanadium is poorly absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract, a large percentage of vanadium is excreted unabsorbed in the feces in rats following oral exposure. More than 80% of the administered dose of ammonium metavanadate accumulated in the feces after 6 days (Patterson et al. 1986). After 2 weeks of exposure, 59.1 18.8% of sodium metavanadate was found in the feces (Bogden et al. 1982). However, the principal route of excretion of the small absorbed portion of vanadium is through the kidney in animals. 

Vanadium can be absorbed through the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, although the gastrointestinal route is the most studied. Vanadium occurs in the diet, or as a pharmacological agent, mainly as vanadyl or vanadate. Vanadate is transformed into vanadyl in the stomach [67], which primarily is the absorbed form. Most studies indicate that relatively little (<5%) ingested vanadium is absorbed and the remainder is excreted in the feces [68-74]. However, as with all substances, other dietary components probably affect absorption. The main route of excretion of absorbed vanadium is in the urine with lesser amounts lost in the feces, probably via the bile [74-77]. 

Later, Chasteen, Lord, and Thompson used EPR to determine the chemical forms of both absorbed vanadium in tissue and excreted vanadium in the urine and feces of rats given VOSO4 in drinking water over long periods. EPR signals were well defined in the stomach, duodenum, liver, spleen, kidney, lung, and elimination products [78],... 

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