Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Some mercury with your High Fructose Corn Syrup

You've seen those annoying commercials about high fructose corn syrup, right? Right now I can think of two of them one where brothers are discussing the corn syrup in their cereal and another where a couple are discussing the syrup in their Popsicle. In both instances we are made to believe eating foods with high fructose corn syrup is perfectly fine in moderation.

Turns out that high fructose corn syrup is commonly tainted with mercury -- a highly toxic substance -- according to a peer-reviewed report published by Environmental Health. Overall, they found detectable mercury in 17 of 55 samples, or around 31 percent.

The abstract of this study concluded the following:
Mercury cell chlor-alkali products are used to produce thousands of other products including food ingredients such as citric acid, sodium benzoate, and high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup is used in food products to enhance shelf life. A pilot study was conducted to determine if high fructose corn syrup contains mercury, a toxic metal historically used as an anti-microbial. High fructose corn syrup samples were collected from three different manufacturers and analyzed for total mercury. The samples were found to contain levels of mercury ranging from below a detection limit of 0.005 to 0.570 micrograms mercury per gram of high fructose corn syrup.
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.

You can ready the full scope of the study in PDF format at the Environmental Health website.

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8:13 AM
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