Where does arsenic come from?

World arsenic trioxide output changed -2% in 2025, and the fall sits in two countries. USGS's world total went from 62,500 tonnes in 2024 to 61,000 tonnes, while Peru fell from 31,000 to 30,000 tonnes, Morocco from 6,000 to 5,000 tonnes, and China stayed at 24,000 tonnes (USGS MCS; changes our arithmetic). That is a fall of 3.2% for Peru and 17% for Morocco. The listed countries' changes sum to a fall of 2,000 tonnes against 1,500 for the rounded world total, so the table fixes the direction of the change better than its size.

The three named sources of US arsenic trioxide imports produce only as much as Peru, a source USGS does not name. USGS gives China (counted with Hong Kong) 61%, Morocco 27% and Belgium 6% of US arsenic trioxide imports in 2021 to 2024. Those three produced 24,000, 5,000 and 1,000 tonnes in 2025, which is 30,000 tonnes between them and the same as Peru produced alone (USGS MCS; our arithmetic). The import years and the production year differ, and USGS says the United States has been fully import reliant in every year from 2021 to 2025.

Arsenic production is more concentrated than the mine output of copper, lead or gold, three of the sources USGS names for it. The site's concentration index (the sum of squared percentage shares) for 2025 production is 4,037 for arsenic, against 2,067 for lead, 1,037 for copper and 455 for gold (our arithmetic on USGS MCS). Peru accounts for 49% of arsenic trioxide but 11.7% of mined copper, 6.4% of lead and 3.3% of gold in 2025 (USGS MCS). The data do not say why the shares differ.

USGS reports arsenic production as arsenic trioxide in gross weight, which is the weight of the compound, not the weight of the arsenic inside it. Every production figure on this page is on that basis. A footnote in the USGS chapter gives the arsenic content of arsenic trioxide as 75.71 percent, but this page does not convert, because the USGS world production table is on the gross-weight basis only.

In 2025 Peru produced 30,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide, 49% of the world's 61,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). China followed with 24,000 tonnes (39%) and Morocco with 5,000 tonnes (8.2%), so those three account for 97%. Belgium is credited with 1,000 tonnes (1.6%) and Russia with 500 tonnes (0.8%). The data show 5 countries with output in 2025, and the rounded world total changed -2% on 2024. USGS lists the United States with no production, and says in the text that neither arsenic trioxide nor primary arsenic metal has been produced there since 1985.

Three cautions. The world total is rounded by USGS, so the shares are shares of that rounded figure and the country numbers need not add exactly to it. All production figures are USGS estimates, and USGS says they include a calculated arsenic trioxide equivalent of the output of other arsenic compounds. And USGS says Chile and Mexico were estimated to be significant producers of commercial-grade arsenic trioxide but have reported no production in recent years, so the table says nothing about them.

Refinery capacity is a separate row in the USGS table and is not output. USGS gives it as year-end operating capacity for 2025, in arsenic trioxide gross weight. For each country with both figures it is above 2025 production, and for Russia it is many times higher, so capacity says little about what is made in a year. This page shows production only and does not mix the two rows.

There is no reserves figure on this page. USGS says world reserve data for arsenic were unavailable, though it estimated them to be more than 20 times world production. That is a statement of scale, not a measured number, and this site does not convert it into a reserves total.

This page has no trade table, and the reason is the classification of the goods. Arsenic trioxide shares a customs code with other oxides, so the customs data this site uses cannot isolate it. Arsenic metal has its own code (HS 2804.80), which this site does not track. Nothing on this page is a trade ranking. What follows is only what USGS says about trade and imports, with USGS as the source.

USGS says the United States has not produced arsenic trioxide since 1985 and treats the United States as entirely import reliant for arsenic in all forms, with no government stockpile. For the years 2021 to 2024 it lists the sources of US imports of arsenic trioxide as China (counted with Hong Kong) 61 percent, Morocco 27 percent and Belgium 6 percent. For arsenic metal it lists China 95 percent, and for arsenic acid Malaysia 99 percent. USGS says that through July 2025 China supplied more than 80 percent of US imports of arsenic trioxide and more than 90 percent of arsenic metal imports, and Malaysia supplied almost all the arsenic acid.

These shares describe US imports only and say nothing about trade between other countries. USGS tracks arsenic metal, arsenic acid, arsenic trioxide, arsenic trichloride and arsenic sulfide separately, and lists arsenic trioxide as free of duty at the normal trade relations rate as of 31 December 2025 (the base rate only). USGS also says most US exports reported as arsenic probably reflect alloys, compounds, residues, scrap and waste rather than pure metal.

The producer table and the US import list do not line up, and they should not be forced to. Peru leads production in the data, but USGS does not name it among the sources of US arsenic trioxide imports; China, Morocco and Belgium are the named sources, and anything else sits in USGS's residual "other" group.

This page shows no arsenic price series, because this site has no free public series for arsenic and does not hold a license for a commercial one. This site uses no exchange benchmark for arsenic.

USGS does publish one price, and it is for arsenic metal, not arsenic trioxide. It is an annual average, in dollars per pound, for metal of at least 99 percent arsenic at a US warehouse, and USGS says the source is Argus Media group (Argus Non-Ferrous Markets). USGS gives $1.85 per pound for 2025, an estimate, against $1.97 for 2024. It is not a price for the product in the production table: the production figures are for arsenic trioxide, made mainly as a by-product of processing other ores, while this price is for the metal, a different product.

One number cannot stand for the whole commodity: trioxide, arsenic acid and the metal are different products, and USGS gives no price for the first two. A USGS annual average is also not a current price. How trioxide is priced in contracts is not published in the sources used here, and this page does not guess.

USGS says arsenic may be obtained from copper, gold and lead smelter flue dust and by roasting arsenopyrite, the most abundant ore mineral of arsenic. Umicore says arsenic primarily enters the market as arsenic trioxide, a by-product of lead and copper refining. Supply therefore depends on where those ores are processed, and on whether the arsenic is recovered at all.

USGS says arsenic trioxide in the United States was predominantly used to make arsenic acid, a key ingredient of chromated copper arsenate (CCA) wood preservatives, used mainly for nonresidential lumber such as light poles, marine applications and retaining walls.

USGS says high-purity arsenic metal (99.9999 percent) is used to make gallium arsenide semiconductors for solar cells, space research and telecommunications, specialty optical materials, and indium gallium arsenide for shortwave infrared technology. It also says many semiconductor manufacturers were moving away from gallium arsenide- and silicon-based lateral diffused metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors to those using gallium nitride.

The World Health Organization says arsenic is highly toxic in its inorganic form, and that inorganic arsenic is a confirmed carcinogen and the most significant chemical contaminant in drinking-water globally. In the United States, EPA published a final rule on 22 January 2001 setting the arsenic limit in drinking water at 10 parts per billion, with a compliance date of 23 January 2006.

USGS lists substitutes for CCA in wood treatment, including alkaline copper quaternary, copper azole, copper citrate and copper naphthenate, and substitutes for treated wood itself, including concrete, plastic composite material and steel. For semiconductors it lists silicon, gallium nitride, indium phosphide and silicon-germanium in some applications, while saying no effective substitutes exist for gallium arsenide in many defense applications.

In the data, three countries account for nearly all output, and USGS reports the United States as having no production since 1985 and as fully import reliant. The United States and the European Union both list arsenic as a critical mineral, which is a government assessment of importance and supply, not a statement of shortage.

USGS describes arsenic as obtained from other ores and processing rather than from a dedicated arsenic mine. It says arsenic may be obtained from copper, gold and lead smelter flue dust, from roasting arsenopyrite, from the minerals orpiment and realgar (recovered in China, Peru and the Philippines), from copper-gold ores in Chile and from the copper mineral enargite. It adds that orpiment and realgar from gold mines in Sichuan Province, China, were stockpiled for later recovery of arsenic.

Morocco is a different route. USGS says arsenic trioxide was produced at the hydrometallurgical complex of Guemassa, near Marrakech, from cobalt-arsenide ore from the Bou Azzer mine. That is a hydrometallurgical route on a cobalt ore, not smelter flue dust, so arsenic is not a smelter by-product everywhere.

USGS names arsenic trioxide as the input for arsenic acid, which is a key ingredient in CCA preservatives, and describes high-purity (99.9999 percent) arsenic metal as the material used for semiconductors. It does not describe how either is made.

On recycling, USGS reports that arsenic metal is recycled as new scrap in gallium arsenide semiconductor manufacturing, and that arsenic-containing process water is recycled inside wood treatment plants. It says none was recovered domestically from smelter residues and dusts in the United States.

USGS publishes no world end-use split for arsenic, and this page does not invent one. The USGS chapter describes US use.

USGS says the principal use of arsenic compounds was in herbicides and insecticides, and that the leading use of arsenic domestically was for herbicides, insecticides and wood preservatives, ahead of metallurgical and semiconductor applications. It gives no percentage for each use, only that the three together exceed 80 percent of US use, and this text is not a current breakdown. In wood treatment, arsenic trioxide goes into arsenic acid and then into CCA preservatives for pressure-treated lumber.

In electronics, high-purity arsenic metal makes gallium arsenide for solar cells, space research and telecommunications, indium gallium arsenide for shortwave infrared technology, and germanium-arsenide-selenide optical materials. In metallurgy, USGS says arsenic metal is an antifriction additive for bearings, hardens lead shot and clip-on wheel weights, and strengthens the grids in lead-acid storage batteries. Umicore adds specialty glassmaking to the list.

EPA records that in December 2003 manufacturers of chromated arsenicals voluntarily stopped making treated wood for homeowner uses. CCA-treated wood stays authorized for commercial applications such as poles, posts, pilings and permanent foundation beams. EPA did not require removal of existing structures.

The chain starts with copper, lead, gold, arsenopyrite or cobalt-arsenide ores, moves through smelting or hydrometallurgical treatment where arsenic is captured as arsenic trioxide, and then splits into arsenic acid for wood preservatives, high-purity metal for semiconductors and other products. The linked metals are copper, lead and gold, and the arsenic supply cannot be separated from what happens to them.

The production table is concentrated: 97% of the 61,000 tonnes total comes from Peru, China and Morocco. USGS calls them the leading global producers of arsenic trioxide in 2025. The United States has no production and no stockpile, according to USGS, and depends on imports.

Arsenic is on the 2025 US critical minerals list, which the Interior Department announced on 6 November 2025 (Federal Register notice 7 November 2025) with 60 minerals, where the USGS description is that arsenic is used in semiconductors. As of October 2026 it is also on the European Commission's list of 34 critical raw materials. The critical minerals hub explains what those lists are, and the glossary entry defines the term. A listing is a government assessment, and this page claims no shortage. What the data show is narrower: output is concentrated, USGS gives no measured reserves, and the US imports what it uses.