Finally! The FDA Admits That Nearly Over 70% of U.S. Chickens Contain Cancer-Causing Arsenic

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So, the next time you’re out buying chicken (if you’re not totally put off by it at this point) make sure you look out for the following:

-If the chicken meat is bright pink in color, like in an unnatural way, avoid it at all costs.

-Make sure that the fat content on the chicken is white to deep yellow, not gray or pasty.

-Check the date on the package.

-And finally, aim for “Certified Organic” meat products. It’s probably safest choice for you and your family.

The term “heavy metal” is a somewhat arbitrary and amorphous designation having no official chemical meaning. Nevertheless, the use of this term not only persists but is quite common. Some heavy metals are essential for life. Human blood is red, for example, because that is the color of the oxidized iron carried in our blood cells. A number of heavy metals toxic. Some heavy metals are essential at low concentrations but are toxic at higher concentrations. Copper is relatively toxic for humans, but is essential for most mollusks and some arthropods (such as the Horseshoe Crab) because the oxygen carrying feature of their blood is not iron but copper. Oxygenated copper is a lovely shade of blue. Nonetheless, iron-based blood carries about four times as much oxygen as copper-based blood. Other still more primitive sea creatures such as sea cucumber have “blood” that is yellow, because it is based upon Vanadium, which is toxic for us, although this pigment does not carry oxygen for the organism. It is important to consider life’s history, diversity and attendant intricacies when assigning the toxicity of any given substance.

All heavy metals are “natural” components of this world we live in, but “natural” doesn’t mean harmless. Just ask anyone bitten by a venomous snake, scorpion, fire ant, or what have you. The same gorgeous natural stream capable of providing an idyllic day of fly-fishing for trout is also able to give rise to the misery of black flies in their millions. To discover this for yourself (not recommended), take a hike through the backwoods of Maine in May.

The food we eat is certainly a natural product, even given the modifications introduced by breeding efforts involved in its production. However, these days much of our food comes from our industrialized agriculture and an ever-increasing fraction of it is imported. It is FDA’s job to inspect food coming into the U.S., yet FDA itself admits that it is able to inspect only about 2.1% of this country’s food imports. It is a big job, yet soon FDA may have fewer funds to work with. FDA is currently implementing the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act passed in January of 2011, yet in March 2012 House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) outlined a budget that would cut an additional $5.3 trillion from Health and Human Services throughout the next decade over and above President Obama’s budget request. FDA is part of Health and Human Services. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Representative Frank Lucas (R-OK) praised this budget proposal as evidence of Republican leadership in deficit reduction. It seems very hard to avoid the conclusion that House Republicans would prefer to see deficit reduction even at the cost of food safety. This is especially worrisome as food safety over the past year has been far from ideal.

In many places across the country water sources are tainted with arsenic. Even well water can have arsenic in it. Arsenic is a toxic chemical element that is unevenly distributed in the Earth’s crust in soil, rocks and minerals. When present in ground water, naturally occurring arsenic is largely the result of minerals dissolving from weathered rocks and soils. In 2001 the EPA lowered the maximum level of arsenic permitted in drinking water from 50 micrograms per liter to 10 micrograms per liter. This change has led many municipalities across the country scrambling to find ways to filter this contaminant. For example, in Orange County, California there are 4 water sources and 3 water systems that have been identified with peak arsenic detections greater than 10 micrograms per liter.

A 2007 study found that over 137 million people in more than 70 countries are probably affected by arsenic poisoning of drinking water. In the United States, millions of private wells have unknown arsenic levels, and in some areas over 20% of wells contain levels that are not safe. In a February 2000 report, the National Resources Defense Council analyzed data compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on arsenic in drinking water in 25 states. From the data collected, most conservative estimates indicate that more than 34 million Americans were drinking tap water supplied by systems containing levels of arsenic that posed unacceptable cancer risks. It is likely that as many as 56 million people in those 25 states were drinking water with arsenic at unsafe levels-and that is just the 25 states that reported arsenic information to the EPA.

Arsenic is a carcinogen which causes many cancers including skin, lung and bladder, as well as cardiovascular disease. Even lower concentrations of arsenic contamination can raise the risk of several serious diseases. It’s a good idea to know what your drinking water contains to keep you and your family healthy.

Another study had preliminary findings of a relationship between arsenic exposure and Type II diabetes. The results supported the hypothesis that low levels of exposure to inorganic arsenic in drinking water may play a role in diabetes prevalence. Arsenic in drinking water may also compromise immune system function. In May of 2009 scientists linked the lack of immune system response to the H1N1 flu virus to even a low level of arsenic exposure. For example, the H1N1 virus outbreak was greater in Mexico than in the US. Mexico has large areas of very high arsenic in their well water, and the flu first became epidemic in the areas with the highest arsenic concentrations. It was found that while a normal person infected with the flu would immediately develop an immune response where immune cells rush to the lungs and produce chemicals that help fight the infection, those with prolonged exposure to arsenic might have a delayed response in immune cells. The Dartmouth Medical School did a study on mice that had ingested 100 ppb (parts per billion) arsenic in their drinking water for 5 weeks, the immune response to H1N1 infection was at first very feeble, and when a response finally did kick in days later, it was too little and too late.

Arsenic exposure not only disrupts the immune system, it also disrupts the hormonal system. It disrupts the pathways of all five steroid hormone receptors as well as several other hormone pathways. This one effect could play a role in cancer, diabetes, heart disease, reproductive and developmental disorders – all the diseases that have a strong hormonal component. At present, the Dartmouth Medical Researchers are focused on understanding the unusual “biphasic” effect that arsenic has on the endocrine system. At very low doses, arsenic stimulates or enhances hormone responses, while at slightly higher doses (still within the range found in drinking water); it suppresses these same hormone responses. They want to figure out this switch in order to better understand why arsenic does what it does in the human body.