In late May, the organic baby formula maker Natures One announced a goal ofzero arsenic in its product. Good, you say. Great. Makes perfect sense. Or it would except for this question - why is a poison like arsenic, of all things, an issue in baby formula?
Read a little further in the Natures One press release, and youll find a direct link to the problem. The link goes to a February study, published in the Journal of Applied Chemistry, titled Arsenic Concentration and Speciation in Infant Formula and First Foods.
That study, I want to emphasize, found nothing panic worthy, nothing but very trace levels of arsenic in formula and baby food. But, still, as I wrote last week, arsenic can have health effects at a surprisingly low dose. Its no wonder that Natures One so determinedly wants none of it.
But there are other things to wonder about here. Such as - why does arsenic so inconveniently turn up in the food supply? And are public health officials doing anything to protect us in this regard? These are connected questions but Ill give you one heads up on the latter. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency sets a safety limit of ten parts per billion for arsenic in drinking water. But to the frustration of advocates and scientists - the Food and Drug Administration offers no safety standard for arsenic in food .
And that matters because study I cited is just one of many telling us that there is some risk here. The word speciation in that title refers to the type of arsenic. The basic division is between organic (a carbon-containing compound) and inorganic arsenic. Its a big division actually. Our bodies metabolize organic arsenic compounds efficiently and they are not particularly dangerous. Inorganic arsenic, by contrast, is notably dangerous. And its that more poisonous variation that turned up in the baby formulas and cereals.
And here, as they say, is where the story gets interesting.
The researchers of that study, based at Dartmouth University, identified rice as the primary source of inorganic arsenic. They found it (again, in very tiny amounts) in rice syrup used to sweeten baby formula, rice cereal, rice flour used in making crackers and cookies. This does not mean that rice is by by nature a poisonous plant. It isnt.
But both soil and groundwater can contain arsenic - as a naturally occurring element and as a residue from the use of arsenic-based pesticides. And , as the Dartmouth scientists noted, Although As (arsenic) is not readily taken up by crops or transported to the edible parts, a notable exception is riceThe magnitude of this uptake varies widely between cultivars but the ability to take up elevated concentrations of As (in comparison with other cereal crops) appears to be a trait found in the entire rice germplasm.
In other words, rice turns out to be outstandingly good at absorbing arsenic from the environment and storing it. One reason is that the plant is designed to easily absorb the mineral silicon which helps give rice grains their elegantly smooth structure. The crystalline structure of arsenic is just close enough that rice plants readily uptake arsenic as well. In fact, a toxic metal study, also from Dartmouth, describes rice as a natural arsenic accumulator.
Original post:
The Arsenic Diet
