High-fructose corn syrup rose from obscurity to ubiquity starting in the late 1970s, borne up by an informal public-private partnership between grain-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland and the federal government. For me, HFCS is at best a highly processed, lavishly subsidized, calorie-heavy, nutritional vacuum.
I recently visited a public high school in Boone, N.C. The main hall literally hummed with machines peddling variations on Coca-Cola’s formula for success: fizzy water with artificial flavor, artificial color, added caffeine, and a jolt of HFCS. Other machines displayed snack “foods” tarted up with HFCS. Why are we feeding our kids this crap, again?
Now comes news that makes even an HFCS cynic like me do a spit-take over my home-brewed morning coffee. Turns out that HFCS is commonly tainted with mercury—a highly toxic substance—according to a peer-reviewed report published by Environmental Health (abstract here; PDF of the must-read full text here.)
The Environmental Health study draws on samples of high-fructose corn syrup taken straight from the factory. But no one drinks the stuff straight. What about, say, cookies sweetened with HFCS? The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy plucked HFCS-containing products from supermarket shelves and tested them for mercury. The result?
Overall, we found detectable mercury in 17 of 55 samples, or around 31 percent
Traces of mercury turned up in name-brand products from makers including Quaker, Hunt’s, Manwich, Hershey’s, Smucker’s, Kraft, Nutri-Grain, and Yoplait.
That a ubiquitous industrial-food ingredient such as HFCS should be tainted by mercury is bad enough. But it gets worse. The FDA has apparently known about this since 2005—and done nothing to publicize it or change it.
In 2005, EH study lead author Renee Dufault was an FDA researcher. At that time, she conducted the tests now cited in the EH report. Her results found mercury in 9 of 20 HFCS samples—45 percent.
She doesn’t comment on why, but the FDA apparently did nothing with her results in the years since they emerged. She retired from the agency in March 2008—and evidently decided to go public. She deserves praise for the decision to publish her work—essentially blowing the whistle on what looks like an egregious attempt to hide key information from the public.
So how does mercury work its way into our the food industry’s favorite sweetener? It finds its way into Pop Tarts and the like through the stunning array chemicals required to transform corn into a cane sugar substitute. (As you read the following list, marvel that the FDA recently ruled that manufacturers can label HFCS-sweetened foods "natural.") According the the EH study:
Several chemicals are required to make HFCS, including caustic soda, hydrochloric acid, alpha-amylase, gluco-amylase, isomerase, ilter aid, powdered carbon, calcium chloride, and magnesium sulfate.
Two of those charming-sounding chemicals—caustic soda and hydrochloric acid—can contain traces of mercury.
Caustic soda and hydrochloric acid are made through the same processes that produce chlorine. It can be done in one of two ways. The first involves pumping saltwater through a vat of mercury. The stuff produced this way is known as "mercury grade."
The second process involves no mercury. The industry is shifting to the second process, but the mercury style has by no means been phased out. According to IATP, "Today, the chlorine industry remains the largest intentional consumer (end user) of mercury."
So you’ve got this "mercury grade" caustic soda and hydrochloric acid floating around. Guess who’s using it? According to the EH study, "mercury grade caustic soda and hydrochloric acid are primarily used by the high fructose corn syrup industry."
Not only did the FDA fail to inform the public of HFCS’s mercury problem; food manufacturers that use HFCS may have been in the dark, IATP reports.
There is one hopeful tidbit from the highly disturbing Environmental Health and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy studies. Several years ago, then-Sen. Barack Obama introduced legislation that would have forced the chlorine industry to phase out mercury.
That bill failed. I hope the new Congress revives it. And I hope the Obama FDA investigates precisely why the agency sat on information that could have saved consumers from mercury exposure. The officials who made that decision—as well as the HFCS industry, led by Archer Daniels Midland—must be held to account.
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Comments
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Anhinga Posted 10:24 pm
26 Jan 2009
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Fawn Pattison Posted 11:40 pm
26 Jan 2009
I can't wait to see their spin on this one. I wonder how long before they start sowing doubt about the risk of mercury in your kid's popsicle. "Wow, you get your hair done by an environmental toxicologist?"
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bethkemler Posted 2:32 am
27 Jan 2009
Since the campaign started in 2005, the companies involved have voluntarily agreed to stop using mercury at 5 of the 9 plants that were originally using it. To email the owners of the remaining 4 plants, go to http://takeaction.oceana.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11 ...
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Ariane Lotti Posted 3:18 am
27 Jan 2009
"This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance."
Outdated. Gotta love it.
It'll be interesting to see whether they have been using mercury-free versions of the two re-agents or are just trying to dig their way out of this one. Keep us posted, Tom.
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SaraJane Posted 3:28 am
27 Jan 2009
I reposted this information on my blog with a link leading back to this article, http://themeadowlark.livejournal.com/210554.html - people need to be aware of this! Thank you for posting this article.
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anthony11 Posted 3:36 am
27 Jan 2009
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edarnold41 Posted 3:47 am
27 Jan 2009
Has anyone commissioned a study to see how safe this preferred foodsource really is?
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Pompey Road Posted 4:23 am
27 Jan 2009
When they decided to get lead and some of the toxic chemicals out of the environment all of the old service station gas pump tanks had to be dug up and the soil removed and cleaned/replaced. It took millions of tax payer dollars to start this process and we are still working on it. The large coal wash water impoundments pose an Environmental Hazard and if we ever get around to cleaning them up the taxpayers will get stuck with a humongous bill again. Each Heavy Metal in and of itself is named on the EPA Hazard Materials list but when you combine all of them into a toxic soup and call it a coal slurry or waste water impoundment it is not. Curios to observe this little practice.
When you do Mountain Top Removal the rock overburden is blasted into smaller pieces and the mineral disturbed in the soil. When you stack all this aggregate rock and subsoil in a valley and when the rains that fed the covered up stream is now allowed to leech throw this overburden sieve the heavy metals are leeched out into what's left of the stream below the fill. Remember this was solid rock and subsoil packed form eons of time and the runoff before was on top of this and did not contain the heavy metals. All of this goes into the same tributaries mentioned above.
Co2 and Global warming dominates the discussion sometimes when we talk about the burning of coal. The myriads of problems associated with the mining of coal are hardly ever mentioned or studied much less addressed.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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linzzay Posted 5:12 am
27 Jan 2009
Caustic soda and hydrochloric acid were produced as part of Allied Chemical's operations. Caustic soda was produced at the Main Plant, which operated from 1881 - 1986. Mercury was used in the plant's operations beginning in 1930 and continuing until closure. Hydrochloric acid was produced at the Willis Ave plant, which operated from 1918 - 1977. The mercury cell process was used here from 1947-1977. Allied Chemical, now known as Honeywell International, dumped the byproducts of these processes, including mercury, directly into the lake and their wastebeds along the lakeshore.
Today, Onondaga Lake is a Superfund site. How many other Superfund sites are being created from the need for these products to create high fructose corn syrup today?
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rajan Posted 11:40 am
27 Jan 2009
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craigp42 Posted 11:27 pm
27 Jan 2009
The potential for contamination of our food system does beg a couple of questions, like, "What is the rate of mercury deposition from atmospheric fallout?" Is it high enough to contaminate the surface of our leafy greens, our monster zucchini, our succulent red bell peppers? Or does it accumulate in our topsoil, reaching concentrations where plants are forced to take it up at higher rates than they would under ideal conditions? Several studies have shown that when mercury levels were artificially increased, the efficiency of photosynthesis went down--photosynthesis currently being the largest source of energy on the planet.
If plants are taking up mercury, is it getting concentrated in roots, stems, leaves, or reproductive tissue? Maybe organic lettuce has more mercury in it than an organic tomato. Maybe both have lower chemical residue than their artificially-fertilized and artificially-bug-free counterpart (not to say that organic produce is plagued by bugs; there are just more creative ways to control pests than introducing toxins into your backyard).
Wild fish in our lakes, streams, ponds, and sloughs have become a concern because they are near the top of the aquatic food chain and suffer from the effects of mercury accumulating in algae and bugs. Perhaps we should be more concerned about organic eggs or organic cheese than organic veggies? If we had the ability to do a very careful accounting of the the inputs and outputs of different food systems, my money is still on organic contributing more to the health of people and the land. Once upon a time, conservationists were concerned mostly with eroding soils and loss of wildlife habitat when it came to less-than-ideal farming and food producting. Today, we have all that and an obesity epidemic and a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Jmatt Posted 2:32 am
29 Jan 2009
For those of us that question industry claims of no mercury in HFCS or other products, they state that any Hg concentrations are so low that you would have to drink a 55 gal drum of soda for any ill effects. Due diligence is what is needed and that will not come from the very politically astute Corn Lobby. The American Food Industry does not have a "Farm to Fork" food certification requirement as other countries have. Industry ability to resist such controls has placed us at risk to multiple tainted food products on an all too regular basis.
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chriscoccaro Posted 3:49 am
29 Jan 2009
In the last couple of sessions of Congress, we have worked with then-Senator Obama to introduce legislation that would ban mercury in chlor-alkali production by 2012. We will be working to make sure the legislation passes this year!
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