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ARSENIC (As)

ATOMIC NUMBER: 33

GROUP 15: NITROGEN AND PHOSPHOROUS

The very mention of the element arsenic evokes thoughts of its notorious role as a poison in the commission of murder, often incited by passion, jealousy, or the quest for power. This use, long captured in literature and the infamous crimes of centuries past, continues today.

Yet in modern times, the broader impact of arsenic as a chronic, cumulative contaminate in water, food, and the air eclipses the significance of acute, deliberate poisoning. Arsenic does not always kill so quickly. It is a known carcinogen that has been linked to tumors formed in the skin, lungs, bladder, kidneys, and digestive tract²⁶ as well as the lymphatic and hematopoietic systems²⁷ in both humans and animals. Arsenic’s numerous detrimental health effects have been well documented to include diabetes, heart disease, cardiovascular issues, respiratory distress, impaired neurological development, and even depression. Arsenic toxicity has also been linked to increased infant mortality and early developmental issues.

Notably, arsenic comes in two forms: organic and inorganic. Defined by their bonds with carbon and hydrogen, the organic forms of arsenic are largely considered harmless. The inorganic forms of arsenic widely used in industrial applications, which are typically bound to elements such as oxygen, sulfur, or chloride, are the varieties associated with arsenic’s poisonous and carcinogenic effects. Common inorganic forms of arsenic include arsenic trioxide (a common industrial by-product also used in some medical treatments), chromate copper arsenate (widely used as a wood preservative that also acts as an insecticide), and pesticides. Lead arsenate, calcium arsenate, “Paris Green” (copper acetoarsenite), and sodium arsenate are all pesticides derived from inorganic arsenic.

Arsenic in drinking water

The tainting of well-water supplies across the globe with arsenic trioxide is a mounting catastrophic problem affecting more than 137 million people who have been exposed to levels exceeding 10 ppb in drinking water, the standard set by both the United Nations WHO and the EPA. A geological study conducted by Peter Ravenscroft at the University of Cambridge further discovered that some 57 million people are drinking water at peak contamination rates of more than 50 ppb—putting them at a serious risk for cancer and other health effects.²⁸

This problem with arsenic contamination in water is most concentrated in Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian state of West Bengal, where nearly half the population drinks from contaminated sources after decades of Western aid directed the construction of tube wells that tapped directly into arsenic-tainted water reservoirs.²⁹ Because of this, Bangladesh has 27 million people drinking from sources that contain greater than 50 ppb of arsenic, while West Bengal and a few other areas of India have a combined 11 million people exposed to carcinogenic levels of arsenic-tainted drinking water.

An astounding 80 million people in this region drink water containing more than 10 ppb of arsenic. Bangladesh is considered the “biggest arsenic catastrophe in the world,”³⁰ where fifty-nine out of sixty-four districts are affected, and more than half the total population is at risk of arsenic contamination. This repeated exposure to arsenic is known as arsenicosis, which is typically diagnosed via visible skin lesions, although symptoms can also include dehydration, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, dark urine, delirium, vertigo, shock, and eventually death.

A study carried out in Bangladesh also confirmed a link between high arsenic exposure and anemia, a condition in which a person lacks healthy red blood cells and suffers from inadequate oxygen delivery to the body’s cells and tissues.³¹

Other parts of the world face significant arsenic levels in drinking water as well. Another 5.6 million people in China and an astonishing 3 million in the United States also drink water that’s heavily contaminated with arsenic. Several millions more across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Region, Russia, the Middle East, South America, and other pockets of the world are exposed to arsenic in their drinking water.³²

While lakes, streams, and groundwater remain unregulated for arsenic, the EPA has limited public drinking water sources to 10 ppb. Despite this, several thousand water districts across the United States continue to contain dangerously high levels of arsenic.

Arsenic in the food chain and biosphere

Arsenic has thoroughly contaminated our food chain and the environment. Chronic exposure to arsenic compounds in food—even in low doses over time—has been definitively linked with the development of cancers, especially in the skin, liver, bladder, and lungs.³³

The ability of inorganic arsenic to destroy and kill has also made it an important and widespread element in a cocktail of pesticides as well as an important wood preservative that doubles as an insecticide. As a result of the widespread use of agricultural and industrial arsenic compounds, arsenic has entered the soil and our surrounding environment at nearly every conceivable point—ultimately tainting the world’s food supply.

In addition to organic arsenic compounds that are frequently found in small amounts in many foods, a number of inorganic arsenic varieties have contaminated production crops that feed America and the world. The real sources of concern are those accumulated from widespread pesticide and fertilizer use, runoff from industrial production, and—a factor of greater importance than most people realize —from pressure-treated wood.

Arsenic as a pesticide

Before the development of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), lead arsenate—a deadly cocktail of the heavy metals lead and arsenic—was one of the most widely used pesticides, dominating agriculture in the first half of the twentieth century. Along with other arsenic-based pesticides like calcium arsenate and “Paris Green,” arsenic was used to control moths and other pests, especially in apple orchards and other fruit trees as well as cotton crops—despite the fact health concerns over arsenic residues had been officially acknowledged as far back as 1919.³⁴ Other inorganic varieties and a few organic varieties of arsenic were used for mosquito control and as insecticides, rodenticides, and herbicides sprayed on everything from curbs to sidewalks to road perimeters.

In addition to pesticide applications, a number of phosphate and micronutrient fertilizers—even those meant for organic food production—have been found to contain elevated arsenic and heavy metal levels, further contaminating many soils.³⁵

The EPA’s first comprehensive report on arsenic pesticides in 1972 listed numerous compounds and their known uses and hazards.³⁶ They include lead arsenate, “Paris Green,” calcium arsenate, basic copper arsenate, ammonium arsenate, arsenic acid, arsenic pentoxide, arsenic trioxide, sodium pyroarsenate, sodium arsenate, and potassium arsenate, as well as several harmful “arsenic-containing organic compounds used in formulating pesticides,” including cacodylic acid—just to name a few.

According to the EPA, although DDT replaced much of the use of lead arsenate in the post-war period, that later reversed after federal regulations severely limited the use of DDT and other organochlorine insecticides. Subsequently, the use of some arsenicals as pesticide resumed by the late 1960s. By 1969, annual production of arsenic trioxide had increased to 66,000 tons. Meanwhile, more than 4 million pounds of lead arsenate and some 2 million pounds of calcium arsenate were also produced for industrial purposes.

These varieties of pesticides were useful in controlling moths, beetles, and other pests, particularly in orchards during the period spanning from 1890 to 1940, where lead arsenate was sprayed directly onto fruits, including apples, apricots, cherries, peaches, pears, plums, prunes, nectarines, quinces, and grapes.

Calcium arsenate was also frequently used as a pesticide on a wide range of agriculture crops, including asparagus, beans, blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, collards, corn, cucumbers, dewberries, eggplant, kale, kohlrabi, loganberries, melons, peppers, pumpkins, raspberries, rutabagas, spinach, and squash—until the EPA canceled registration for its use in 1988. The registration was canceled after it was found that these pesticides posed “cancer risks to workers and acute toxicity to the general public.”³⁷

Not only were edible crops treated with calcium arsenate, but cotton crops spanning millions of acres in states including Texas and Oklahoma were annually sprayed with arsenic acid, leaving soils contaminated at levels that measured as high as 830 ppm.³⁸

According to the EPA, many farmers who had been interviewed claimed their orchard trees lived shorter lives and that their fields were unsuitable for various forage crops typically grown during alternating years, giving support to the case for the negative effects presented by widespread arsenic soil contamination. The heaviest scheduled uses were in repelling Syneta beetles in apricots, peaches, and quince. Five to six pounds of arsenic-laced pesticide were used per 100 gallons of water, a mixture used on these crops for decades. Grapes were also subjected to some of the heaviest doses of arsenic, with sodium arsenate fungicide registered for use at an average rate of 3 to 9 pounds per acre in an effort to stop black measles and crown gall.

While arsenic pesticides have been found to metabolize into secondary forms with the aid of microorganisms, researchers have discovered that about 20 percent of the toxins remained in the soil in their original form decades later, even on fields that received only a single topical soil application. Researchers also found that 55 percent of croplands sprayed with pesticides containing arsenic trioxide back in the 1950s were irreversibly leaching into both groundwater and soils over time.³⁹

Thus, repeated and widespread applications of lead arsenate and other pesticides have contributed to significant accumulations of lead and arsenic in soils, and these toxins can still be found even decades after their use declined or was banned, with horrible health implications that continue to this day.⁴⁰

Ken Rudo, who has worked as the state toxicologist for North Carolina’s Division of Public Health for more than twenty-four years, confirmed that arsenic compounds bind tightly to the soil, presenting a multitude of potential issues. “These chemicals have just tremendously long half-lives in the ground,” Rudo stated in an EPA report.⁴¹ The extensive spread of lead arsenate has made remediation of soils difficult, particularly as arsenic moves to the subsoil layers much more quickly and pervasively than other metals such as lead.

Soil analysis studies in the arsenic- and lead-tainted orchards of Massachusetts have revealed that the two metals “Pb and As bind ‘tightly’ to soil HA [humic acids] molar mass fractions.”⁴²

A study in Taiwan found an important relationship between the geographical concentrations of leading heavy metals, including arsenic and nickel, and the prevalence of oral cancer in patients who smoked or chewed betel quid (a combination of betel leaf, areca nut, and slaked lime). That is, cancer and other malignancies predominated in areas where the soil was contaminated with those elements.⁴³

TOXIC ELEMENTS IN FERTILIZERS

The prevalence of heavy metal compounds in most fertilizers used in agriculture today poses ongoing problems for the bioaccumulation of toxins in crops, animals, humans, and the rest of the food chain.¹

Naturally occurring elements and heavy metals (including mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic) are frequently found in combination with some of the world’s leading industrial ores. This means that mining and processing those ores brings to the surface of the planet toxic elements that would have otherwise stayed buried.

Such is the case with phosphorous, which, alongside nitrogen and potassium, is one of the most important macronutrient constituents used in the creation of fertilizers. Phosphate ore typically contains cadmium in concentrations as high as 300 mg/kg, with sedimentary rock containing the highest concentrations. Other hazardous metals such as lead, nickel, and copper are also abundant in phosphate ores.^2,3

As the primary application of phosphate ore is in the creation of fertilizers, its contamination by cadmium means a significant amount is added to the soil, creating abundant opportunities for human exposure to the known carcinogen and environmental toxin, especially through dietary uptake of foods and the inhalation of tobacco smoke.⁴

However, while phosphate fertilizers contribute a significant quantity of metals—particularly cadmium—to the soil, it is not the number one contributor. It may surprise many to know that industrial waste and sewage sludge is also exploited as a source of fertilizer, and contributes vastly higher quantities of heavy metals and other toxins to soils, and ultimately human intake, than nonwaste fertilizers ever could.⁵

EPA Okays Selling of Sewage Sludge

The wet, solid cake that remains after wastewater treatment plants process industrial and residential waste has long been referred to as sewage sludge. Decades ago, it was common practice for many municipalities—particularly very large urban areas—to haul the sludge and dump it into oceans and waterways, until the practice was banned by the EPA in 1992.⁶

In the mid-1990s, two lobbying groups—the U.S. Composting Council (USCC) and the Water Environment Federation (WEF)—joined forces with the EPA to promote the use of sewage sludge as a safe, effective, and cheap fertilizer under the rebranded name “biosolids.” It was actively promoted by many agencies as an effective way to dispose of human waste, while creating a viable by-product market.⁷

In 1997, the EPA said their “longstanding policy encourages the beneficial reuse and recycling of industrial wastes, including hazardous wastes, when such wastes can be used as safe and effective substitutes for virgin raw materials.”⁸

A study on the bioavailability of cadmium and its accumulation in soils found that while continued phosphate fertilization raised cadmium levels, the increase was much lower than those observed from the application of sewage sludge as fertilizer, both in overall accumulation as well as in bioavailability to Swiss chard and other plants.⁹

Heavy metals in biosolids can be a particularly worrisome issue, as the toxic elements frequently found in drinking water, food, and medicine tend to concentrate in the biosolids that are routinely applied to soils as fertilizer. There, they accumulate in the soil, leading to a persistent rise in toxic elements taken up by food crops.

Biosolids from sewage waste can contain especially high levels of accumulated metals—from lead, to cadmium, to mercury, to arsenic, or others such as nickel, copper, aluminum, or tin.¹⁰

In February of 2016, I acquired a bag of “Dillo Dirt” from the city of Austin, Texas, and I tested it for heavy metals via ICP-MS instrumentation. Dillo Dirt is composted human sewage that’s purchased by landscapers and home gardeners for use on lawns and gardens. Even though the bag says, in small print, that it’s not sold for use on edible vegetable gardens, it is positioned on retail shelves as a garden compost product (and no one reads the small print on a bag of compost anyway).

As you might expect, my ICP-MS analysis showed that Dillo Dirt was heavily contaminated with every toxic element tested, including lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and copper. An organic chemistry analysis conducted by my colleague via LC/MS also revealed shockingly high levels of a chemical fungicide in the compost product.

Mercury used in dental amalgams poses a particularly significant source of concentrated metal exposure and environmental pollution through biosolids, as most dental practices have, for decades, used municipal water for waste disposal, and have been recognized as a significant contamination source.^11,12

Estimates by the World Health Organization found that about one-third of mercury waste collected in sewage sludge substrate is derived from dumping amalgam fillings and related occupational implements. Moreover, many of the methods that have been implemented to separate dental mercury from wastewater were found to be inadequate.¹³

Once elemental mercury, used in dentistry, reaches waterways from direct dumping into groundwater, lakes, and streams, or indirectly from runoff on land tilled with biosolid fertilizer inputs, microbes readily convert it to methylmercury, which infamously bioaccumulates up the food chain in many fish and seafood, eventually reaching humans and others near the top of the food chain (see section on “Methylmercury in fish” on page 49 for more information).¹⁴

Biosolids from sewage sludge are now being increasingly produced and sold by most larger cities in the United States, and are increasingly used as a cheap and readily available source of fertilizer for crops intended for human and animal consumption. This poses numerous problems, including introducing a source of concentrated heavy metals as well as pharmaceutical, antibiotic, industrial, and medical waste, plus a multitude of pathogens, bacteria, viruses, and superbugs into the food chain.¹⁵

Cornell University conducted a 1981 report titled “Organic toxicants and pathogens in sewage sludge and their environmental effects,” which found more than 60,000 toxic substances and chemical compounds of concern in sewage remains. In 1988, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted a National Sewage Sludge Survey, identifying 400 pollutants commonly concentrated in sludge that posed the greatest hazards for large cities; later, in 2001, the EPA followed up with monitoring the levels of carcinogenic dioxins and dioxin-like compounds commonly found in sludge. The possibilities of interaction and further amplification by any or all of these toxic elements and compounds is understudied and unknown, but they present a clear and present risk to public health and safety.¹⁶

Industrial waste from animal feeding operations, and livestock manure in general, is also a source of metals contamination.¹⁷

Arsenic has for many decades been added to the diets of broiler chickens, as well as pigs, turkeys, and other animals, to promote growth. The resulting litter of chickens and other livestock, rich in arsenic compounds, is frequently used as a cheap and readily available fertilizer that the industry would otherwise have to dispose of at great cost.¹⁸

Cow and pig manure from factory farms used as biofertilizers contains concentrated metals and toxic elements. In China, this situation has become especially severe, with copper, arsenic, and zinc bioaccumulating through animals, manure, and soils. Chicken waste is the most significant source of metal pollution from manure in China, as in the United States, due to the deliberate addition of arsenic.^19,20,21

Reusing excrement from both livestock and human populations is an age-old practice, but never before in history have these by-products included so many hazards in one application.

Cattle sludge from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) add to the soil other pollutants such as antibiotics, pharmaceutical compounds, hormone mimickers, and hundreds of types of bacteria, which carry their own potential risks (see the “Animal Feed Contaminants” section on page 185 for more information). Many critics of CAFO practices believe this sludge by-product to be a potential culprit in recent E. coli outbreaks in the nation’s produce.²²

Arsenic-treated wood

About 90 percent of the arsenic produced for industrial purposes is ultimately used in wood preservation in the form of chromated copper arsenic (CCA). While CCA has now been phased out, it still permeates much of the existing infrastructure. This arsenic compound has been used in lumber treatment to both prevent rotting and to act as an insecticide that kills termites, ants, and other unwanted pests.

This arsenic-treated wood has been almost universally used in utility poles and for fencing and wooden decks around businesses and residences.⁴⁴ The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act now prohibits the use of CCA-treated wood in residential areas, but decades of nearly ubiquitous use has left an enormous exposure footprint on the environment.

The EPA has warned parents not to allow their children to play anywhere on, under, or even near patios and decks that were built with arsenic-treated wood, as the highly toxic arsenic compound is known to leach into the surrounding dirt or soil, as well as the surrounding landscape and any water sources.

Even worse, CCA-treated wood also contains chromium VI, better known as hexavalent chromium, the element that caused so many people in Hinkley, California, to get sick after industrial contamination (as portrayed in the based-on-a-true-story film Erin Brockovich starring Julia Roberts). Hexavalent chromium leaches into the environment at greater levels than arsenic and is considered a genotoxic carcinogen, meaning that it is linked with both cancer and damage to the DNA structure itself.

In addition to these concerns are neighborhood fences, electric poles, picnic tables, and playgrounds. In conjunction with its facilitation of the lumber industry’s voluntary “phasing out” of what was once widespread CCA treatment, the EPA has provided oversight for “focusing on children” by assessing “the potential exposure of children to playground equipment built with CCA-treated wood” since 2001, while considering ways to deal with the countless structures in society that were built with components saturated in this harmful compound.⁴⁵

Testing performed in areas around utility poles that had been heavily coated with a CCA treatment has confirmed that significant levels of both arsenite and arsenate had leached into soils and groundwater in the area.⁴⁶

Some mitigation treatments have successfully converted the toxic inorganic arsenic trioxide to a less harmful pentavalent arsenate form; however, this form readily competes with phosphorous inside the body and thus has been known to impair essential bodily functions.

As far back as 1972, the EPA knew of the toxicity issues with arsenic-based pressure treatments and injection treatments including arsenic acid, arsenic pentoxide dehydrate, sodium arsenate, sodium hydroarsenate, and disodium arsenate, but the agency considered the implications of the loss of use to be a “national disaster” and thus downplayed the real environmental implications.

Arsenic in food

More than a century ago, it was arsenic that helped pave the way for modern reforms to clean up the food supply. In a case in Bradford, England, in 1858, which later spurred the Pharmacy Act of 1868, a sweetshop worker misidentified and then accidentally mixed some 12 pounds of arsenic trioxide into delicacies. Even though several of the experienced workers thought the sweets looked odd, they were still sold, prompting one vendor to demand a discount. Subsequently, twenty people were ultimately killed and at least two hundred others were sickened.⁴⁷ This haphazard poisoning opened the door to regulations that took on food adulteration as a major issue.

Though subsequent regulation has banned the use of many arsenic-based pesticides and curbed some of the chemical’s industrial use, arsenic accumulation in the soil has thoroughly contaminated many areas throughout the world, thus severely affecting the food supply. Even low levels have shown carcinogenic effects through chronic exposure, raising serious concerns about staple food crops.

This problem is compounded by the volume of food exports coming from China and other countries where environmental standards are often lax.

By far the biggest source of total arsenic in foods comes from seafood, including fish, crustaceans, and seaweed. The CDC reports that the “biological half-life of [organic] ingested fish arsenic in humans is estimated to be less than 20 hours, with total urinary clearance in approximately 48 hours.”⁴⁸ Most researchers have dismissed the role of organic sources of arsenic in causing any harm, but inorganic forms are widely recognized as being harmful to human biology. This difference is why a key question we’re examining in our forensic laboratory concerns the ratio of organic versus inorganic arsenic in ocean-derived products. Many seaweeds sold for human consumption, for example, contain very high levels of arsenic. If most of that arsenic is organic arsenic, however, it likely poses no real long-term health risk to those who consume it.

CHINA’S TOXIC POLLUTION CATASTROPHE: IT’S “IMPOSSIBLE TO GROW TRULY ORGANIC FOOD” IN CHINA

China, the world’s largest exporter, is also officially the world’s largest carbon pollution emitter. While pollution is discussed by government organizations and on the news as an abstract but important environmental issue in America, the poor condition of the environment in China is so severe that toxic smog has from time to time closed down everything from roads and bridges to public schools.

In December 2013, emergency health warnings were prompted when record levels of severe air pollution descended over Shanghai, reducing visibility within the city to a mere 60 feet. Hazardous particulate matter in the air reached levels so high, it was well above even the highest warning level of the United States, prompting officials to cancel public school classes for seven consecutive days and ground hundreds of flights.¹ That same month, a deputy minister of China’s Ministry of Land and Resources declared that 3.3 million hectares of Chinese farmland was too polluted to grow crops.²

Sadly, daily life-altering air-pollution levels are a common occurrence in China. The media has actually dubbed these events “Airpocalypse.”³ Pollution has even caused the blooding of rivers in China. Residents in northern China’s Henan province panicked in December 2011 when they awoke to find the Jian River running blood red. The horrifying sight was later attributed to an illegal workshop that had been dumping red dye into the city’s storm water drains. When China’s Yangtze River, the world’s third longest river, dubbed the “golden waterway,” turned a murky red in 2012, the dumping of artificial coloring was thought to be the cause.⁴

In early 2013, Beijing’s Environmental Protection Chief Bao Zhenming was offered more than £20,000 to take a 20-minute swim in a local river completely polluted with all manner of toxic industrial waste; he refused.⁵ A recent Chinese government study admitted that a whopping 90 percent of the groundwater in China’s cities is polluted.⁶ Furthermore, after decades of persistent pollution, China has also admitted the existence of “cancer villages,” where every other household contains someone dying of cancer, dotting the countryside.⁷ In May 2013, government tests confirmed that almost half of all rice for sale in the southern China city of Guangzhou was tainted with toxic heavy metal cadmium, thought to be due to pollution.⁸

China’s pollution problem has actually become so dire that the country’s government has attempted to order all foreign embassies to stop releasing data regarding pollution and air quality in the nation’s large cities in an attempt to censor the severity of this situation from the rest of the world.⁹

The fact that Chinese people have to suffer this environment is horrible, but with the globalization of the world’s food supply, China’s pollution issue and the resultant detriment to human health that comes with it is steadily spreading across the globe. Most people do not realize that a large portion of the world’s food is grown in China’s poisonous environment. China is the third largest source of U.S. food imports according to the USDA.¹⁰ For example, according to the consumer watchdog organization Food & Water Watch, an astounding 78 percent of the tilapia and 70 percent of the apple juice Americans ate and drank in 2009 was imported from China.¹¹

The USDA released a report that same year regarding safety issues with Chinese food imports. The agency noted that the FDA has repeatedly refused these food imports not just on the consideration of environmental pollution, but also due to lax safety standards, unsafe food additives and labeling, drug residue contamination, and “recurring problems with ‘filth.’”¹² However, as Food & Water Watch observed, the FDA inspects less than 2 percent of the food imported to America from China for safety. Of the imports that actually do get inspected, many fail to meet quality standards and are rejected. In 2012 alone, the FDA stopped 260 shipments of imported Chinese food coming into the United States because of heavy contamination with pesticides, bacteria, and/or filth.¹³

This perpetual lack of oversight, safety inspection, and regulation enforcement in China, America, and countries around the world has resulted in notable outbreaks of foodborne illness and death in both humans and animals. Perhaps most well-known in recent history, China’s 2008 melamine milk contamination scandal resulted in 300,000 Chinese children suffering urinary problems—54,000 were hospitalized and six infants eventually died.¹⁴ Melamine is an industrial chemical material used to make shatter-proof plates and other durable items. It is extremely toxic to the kidneys. But because its powder resembles powdered milk in both color and texture, powdered milk producers in China decided to simply substitute melamine for powdered milk and sell it to everyone.

Before long, melamine-tainted dairy began turning up around the world, and the European Union extended its Chinese dairy ban to include a total ban on all products for children containing any percentage of milk whatsoever, including chocolate and biscuits. Melamine was also found in other Chinese foods, including eggs from Chinese chickens who had ingested it in their feed. The year before, melamine-tainted vegetable protein in pet and farm animal food from China resulted in thousands of sick animals and dead pets in the United States, and a hog farm in North Carolina had to be quarantined when the chemical was found present in all of its hogs. Even though China banned melamine in 2007, it should not have been in milk or pet food to begin with.

Melamine is just one instance of the chemical tainting of foods coming out of China—a microcosm of a larger, systematic problem with China’s agricultural and food industry standards. Other Chinese food scandals run the gamut from utterly disgusting to nightmare inducing: pork laden with a phosphorescent bacteria that caused it to actually glow iridescent blue in the dark, garnering it the nickname “Avatar meat”; large portions of rice crops contaminated with aluminum and cadmium; tons of beans thoroughly drenched in poisonous pesticide; milk produced with leather-hydrolyzed protein; counterfeit jellyfish slices made out of sodium benzoate and calcium chloride; recycled cooking oil made from a medley of discarded animal parts or “edible” oil concocted out of chicken and duck feathers and even fox hair.^15,16

The list goes on and on. A Chinese professor’s undercover investigation in 2010 found that an estimated 10 percent of all meals in China were being cooked with “recycled” cooking oil, the majority of which was being scavenged from drains underneath restaurants. His findings prompted the Chinese Food and Drug Administration to respond to the aptly named “sewer oil” scandal. Despite all of this, the Chinese food imports to the United States only continue to grow. The USDA even ever-so-quietly lifted an import ban on Chinese poultry in August 2013.

The issue in China isn’t just about a worsening breakdown of confidence in the global food supply, but also a pervasive problem with far- and wide-reaching consequences on the health of billions of people. China’s regulations and safety oversight are lax. Further, more and more foods labeled “organic” are being exported from China these days, even though there are absolutely no real guarantees that the Chinese organic guidelines are as stringent as they are in other countries; if China’s abysmally lax agricultural regulations are any indication, there is little reason to put any faith into anything coming from China with “organic” printed on it. The USDA’s own reports have admitted that food oversight in China is nothing like that of the United States.¹⁷ A comparative assessment of organic foods produced in both the United States and China published in the summer 2011 issue of the Stanford Journal of International Law concluded the “USDA Organic” label is ultimately misleading because, “the current regulatory framework is not only inadequate to the task of regulating domestic organics, but also incapable of ensuring the integrity of imported organics.”¹⁸ While China traditionally did use organic farming techniques, decades of heavy pesticide use followed the country’s socialization in the 1960s, prompting Senior USDA Economist Fred Gale to declare it is now “almost impossible to grow truly organic food in China.”¹⁹

There’s a reason the phrase “Product of China” is printed in such a tiny font on the food products that are labeled with it.

Arsenic in apple juice

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 from burning coal. Scientists estimate that 80,000 tons of arsenic are released into the air each year through the burning of fossil fuels. In the southwest Guizhou region of China, for example, at least 3,000 arsenic-contaminated patients have been diagnosed with skin lesions and elevated urinary levels due to exposure to inorganic arsenic emitted from coal-burning power plants. Among this group, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China has noted that high cancer and mortality rates in the area are far more prevalent than even those found in areas with heavily contaminated drinking water.⁶²

In the United States, even though it was known that coal plants were spewing more toxic pollutants into the air than any other industrial source—some 386,000 tons of 84 unique hazardous air pollutants including arsenic, lead, and mercury are released from over 400 U.S. plants each year alone—the EPA did not even formally introduce standards to limit this type of toxic pollution from power plants until December 2011.⁶³

Arsenic interference in the body

Central to the issue of heavy metals in the body is their propensity to compete with essential nutrients. Phosphate, for example, is required by the body to build healthy bones and teeth; phosphate also makes muscles contract and helps nerves function properly. Both arsenic and phosphorus are in the same group on the periodic table, and both have five electrons on their outer shells; thus, they biochemically compete inside the body for binding and absorption.⁶⁴ Because of this, arsenic can block the production of necessary enzymes and proteins by binding in places where phosphorus would normally go.

As with other toxic heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic has also been shown to inhibit thiol compounds including glutathione, which is one of the body’s key detoxification agents and mandatory for a properly functioning immune system and warding off disease. Arsenic compounds also alter the body’s ability to use pyruvate properly.⁶⁵ This deficiency allows lactic acid to build up to toxic levels, leading to neurological problems including seizures, intellectual deficits, and problems with even basic motor skills like walking. Most children suffering from pyruvate dehydrogenase deficiency don’t live very long past childhood, and those who do suffer developmental disabilities.⁶⁶

Treatments for arsenic toxicity

Arsenic is quickly metabolized and distributed throughout the body via the lungs, liver, and kidneys, where it settles into keratin-rich tissues like the hair, nails, and skin. While the half-life of inorganic arsenic in the body is relatively short—the majority of it is excreted within less than a day—chronic, repeated exposure to arsenic is where the real danger lies. Currently, there are no 100 percent cure-alls for mitigating arsenic’s carcinogenic effects.

Well-known treatments for arsenic poisoning include chelating the metalloid with several agents including British anti-Lewisite (BAL), sodium 2,3-dimercaptopropane 1-sulfonate (DMPS), and meso 2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), among others. These chelation agents bind with arsenic and allow it to be flushed out of the body via excretion.⁶⁷

In 1938, it was discovered that arsenic actually protected against selenium poisoning. Shortly after, arsenic began to be used as a tonic by industrial hygienists to cure workers of selenium poisoning.⁶⁸ More recent research with animals has shown selenium is effective at countering arsenic toxicity, and studies are eying selenium supplementation as a low-cost way to counter chronic arsenic poisoning.⁶⁹

Several studies have linked the use of garlic to decreased effects of arsenic toxicity on cells.^70,71,72

Natural arsenic binders

My own laboratory research at the Natural News Forensic Food Labs (labs.naturalnews.com) has identified many substances that have a natural affinity for binding to arsenic. Throughout 2013, I developed a testing methodology called “Metals Capturing Capacity” (MCC), that is able to determine how well any given substance naturally binds with and captures free arsenic. Metals Capturing Capacity is explained in more detail in videos found at labs.naturalnews.com/videos.html.

After testing more than 1,000 substances for their natural arsenic binding properties, I found that the substances with the highest arsenic MCC were:

• Powdered fruit seeds

• Sodium alginate

• Dehydrated powders of certain rare seaweeds

After completing the research, I formulated a series of dietary supplements that maximize the binding and capturing of heavy metals, including arsenic. This resulted in the release of a fruit-based formula with an arsenic reduction of 14.8 percent, and then a much stronger “Metals Defense” formula with an arsenic reduction of 92.9 percent and an MCC of 6.0, meaning each gram of the formula binds with 6.0 micrograms of free arsenic. (See more scientific results at www.HeavyMetalsDefense.com.)

Importantly, this formula only binds with arsenic during digestion, before it is absorbed into the bloodstream. Once arsenic enters the blood and latches on to cells and tissues, it is extremely difficult to remove from the body without using aggressive interventions such as intravenous chelation agents. Hair, nail, and skin cells (where arsenic eventually settles) fall away on their own, of course, demonstrating one of the body’s elimination pathways. Ultimately, it is important to avoid ongoing exposure to arsenic (and other toxic elements) while giving the body time to rid itself of the offending elements through routine processes of growth and regeneration.