Controversies surrounding the arsenic content in juices and rice have made their way into the mainstream media over the last few years. The prominent TV show host Dr. Mehmet Oz created a significant stir after releasing test results that showed what his team considered dangerous levels of arsenic in apple juices49—many were top brand name products typically found in grocery stores across the United States. Many established voices tried to discredit the claims made by Dr. Oz by preying on the public-at-large’s ignorance, focusing on the lack of differentiation between arsenic’s organic and inorganic speciation.
However, watchdog Consumer Reports followed up with confirmation that many juices—including those of the ever-popular apple and grape varieties—were indeed found to contain arsenic levels higher than the federal standard for drinking water, and the majority of this arsenic was inorganic and linked to potentially deadly health effects, including cancer.50 Approximately 10 percent of the eighty-eight samples, which included a variety of name brands, showed arsenic levels above the 10 ppb threshold.
Consumer Reports identified Denise Wilson, PhD, a professor at the University of Washington, as having conducted her own testing of apple juices in which she discovered high levels of arsenic, even in brands labeled as organic. Wilson stated, “We are finding problems with some Washington state apples, not because of irresponsible farming practices now, but because lead arsenate pesticides that were used here decades ago are still in the soil. Heavy metals like lead and arsenic just don’t go away.”
Concern was further elevated by the fact that more than 60 percent of juice imports come from China, where the use of arsenic-based pesticides may still be ongoing and regulations for foods are even shadier than those in the United States.
After significant public pressure, the FDA was forced to consider new rules and finally conducted its own tests. After the results were released in July 2013, essentially confirming the arsenic tainting that it had previously attempted to sweep under the rug, the agency established a new proposed limit of 10 ppb for inorganic arsenic levels in apple juice, the same as EPA standards for drinking water. While maintaining that no specific danger was posed by the arsenic levels it found in juice, the FDA did acknowledge that “the arsenic in these samples was predominantly the inorganic form”—a form that is a Class A known human carcinogen.51
The agency claims there is no “short-term risk” from arsenic levels in food. However, the data backing this up primarily consist of measurements of total arsenic (as opposed to inorganic arsenic) and set aside altogether any consideration of risk potential from long-term, chronic, bioaccumulated exposure. Prior to this, the FDA had few limits on how much arsenic was tolerated in specific foods and no general limit, even though it set up a Total Diet Study program back in 1991, supposedly to monitor food safety.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) also has no hard limits on arsenic in food, but concluded that the “possibility of a risk to some consumers cannot be excluded,” revising and lowering its provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) levels in 2009 after acknowledging that previous data had not properly considered the levels of inorganic arsenic or its propensity to cause cancer in the lungs, bladder, and skin.52
The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), which set the Codex Alimentarius International Food Standards, has since laid down limits on inorganic arsenic, setting the provisional tolerable daily intake (PTDI) at 0.002 mg/kg bodyweight, which is approximated for the average-sized person as 0.12 mg/day (for a 60kg adult). There is no U.S. federal limit for inorganic arsenic levels in food.53
Arsenic in rice and vegetables
Rice is known for its higher arsenic absorption levels. The food staple found itself surrounded by controversy when laboratory tests in 2012 revealed high levels of arsenic in numerous commercial rice products across nearly every variety.
After playing a significant role in exposing arsenic levels in popular juice brands, Consumer Reports turned its spotlight on rice in November that same year.54 Testing more than 200 samples, the organization determined that the daily limit of 5 ppb arsenic (the original limit proposed by the EPA for drinking water that was not adopted) was frequently exceeded by double and triple those amounts—including in brands specifically marketed toward gluten-free and health-conscious niches. Brown rice was also found to have more arsenic overall than white rice in every sample Consumer Reports tested.
Some attribute the elevated arsenic levels in rice to paddies like those in the southern United States, which are generally found near areas where arsenic pesticides for cotton or other crops were traditionally used on a wide scale and subsequently absorbed by rice plants through tainted soil and water.
A bigger offender than even rice and apple juice, which received significant negative press, is the consumption of arsenic in vegetables, which also absorb trace amounts of arsenic from contaminated soils and water. Studies estimate that about a quarter, or 24 percent, of the average arsenic-laced foods ingested are vegetables; this is more than the approximate 18 percent of dietary arsenic derived from fruits and their juices, and the 17 percent of dietary arsenic contributed by rice, according to Consumer Reports’ findings.
The big secret: arsenic in chicken
While the alarm has been sounded on foods like fruit juices, rice, and even vegetables grown in soils contaminated by pesticides tainted with dangerous arsenic compounds, little has been said about the effects of arsenic in poultry and swine.55,56
Drugs used in animal feed for chickens to control internal parasites and promote growth during factory farm confinement have long contained high levels of inorganic arsenic, and humans have been ingesting significant quantities of these compounds for decades. Alarming concentrations of these arsenic compounds in the livers and muscles of young chickens have been discovered at levels far exceeding anything found in rice, grains, fruits, or vegetables.
A 2004 study conducted by the USDA used monitoring data for the Food Safety and Inspection Service National Residue Program to determine average consumption levels for people who ate significant quantities of poultry between 1989 and 2000.57 Researchers discovered mean concentration levels of .39 ppm, or 390 ppb arsenic, levels three to four times higher than in other meats. The report concluded, “At mean levels of chicken consumption (60 g/person/day), people may ingest 1.38–5.24 µg[micrograms]/day of inorganic arsenic from chicken alone” (emphasis added). When vegetables, fruits, and rice consumption are factored into the mix, people are likely eating much more arsenic in a day than previously thought possible.
Revelations about these high levels of toxic, inorganic arsenic led to pressure on the poultry industry and resulted in the voluntary withdrawal of Pfizer’s arsenic-based animal drug roxarsone58 from the market in 2013.59 The FDA states that roxarsone is used for “growth promotion, feed efficiency, and improved pigmentation.”
Unfortunately, other agricultural arsenic drugs are still being used every day all over the world. One example, nitarsone, a chemically similar arsenical drug to roxarsone, is still being used in mass quantities today on turkeys destined for human consumption throughout the United States, where turkey consumption is only going up.60
A study published in May 2013 and conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future examined samples of conventional, antibiotic-free and organic chickens purchased when roxarsone was still widely available on the market. These researchers discovered that levels of inorganic arsenic—again, a known carcinogen—in conventional chicken were four times higher than what they found in organic chicken.61 The authors of the study found the industry boasting about the use of roxarsone in 88 percent of some 9 billion birds raised in the United States, and recommended the FDA ban the use of all arsenicals based on these results.
Further, fertilizers created with poultry waste tainted by inorganic arsenic could be leaching even more toxins back into the soil, which in turn accumulate in crops and humans.
Burning coal and airborne arsenate trioxide
Another source of widespread environmental arsenic contamination comes