The steady growth of inflammatory diseases of the udder in dairy cattle forces us to look for the causes of this phenomenon in the context of growing chemical pollution of the environment and feeds. Within the framework of this concept, an analysis was made of the polarity level of the three toxic impurity groups, which are commonly present in dairy cattle feeds. These impurities are presented by mycotoxins, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and persistent organic pollutants (POP). It has been determined that 46% of studied mycotoxins (n = 1500) and 100% of studied polyaromatic hydrocarbons (n = 45) and persistent organic pollutants (n = 55) are lipophilic compounds, prone to bioaccumulation. A comparative evaluation of the sorption capacity of four adsorbents of a different nature and polarity with respect to the simplest PAH, naphthalene and lipophilic estrogenic mycotoxin, zearalenone in vitro has been carried out. The highest efficiency in these experiments was demonstrated by the reversed-phase polyoctylated polysilicate hydrogel (POPSH). The use of POPSH in a herd of lactating cows significantly reduced the transfer of aldrin, dieldrin and heptachlor, typical POPs from the "dirty dozen", to the milk. The relevance of protecting the main functional systems of animals from the damaging effects of lipophilic toxins from feeds using non-polar adsorbents, and the concept of evaluating the effectiveness of various feed adsorbents for dairy cattle by their influence on the somatic cell count in the collected milk are discussed.
Keywords: Log P; PAH; POP; adsorbent; bioaccumulation; cattle; lipophilicity; mastitis; mycotoxin; ryegrass staggers.