FDA examines level of arsenic in apple juice

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration is considering tightening restrictions for the levels of arsenic allowed in apple juice after consumer groups pushed the agency to crack down on the contaminant.

Studies show that apple juice has generally low levels of arsenic, and the government says it is safe to drink. But consumer advocates say the FDA is allowing too much of the chemical — which is sometimes natural, sometimes man made — into apple juices favored by thirsty kids.

There is little consensus on whether these low levels could eventually be harmful, especially to children. Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods, said Wednesday the agency has already stepped up testing and research on arsenic in apple and other juices and is seriously considering lowering the FDA's so-called "level of concern" for the contaminant.

"We continue to think that apple juice is generally safe based on the fact that the vast majority of samples are very low," Taylor said. "But we want to minimize these exposures as much as we possibly can."

Arsenic is naturally present in water, air, food and soil in the two forms — organic and inorganic. According to the FDA, organic arsenic passes through the body quickly and is essentially harmless. Inorganic arsenic — the type found in pesticides — can be toxic and may pose a cancer risk if consumed at high levels or over a long period.

The FDA uses 23 parts per billion as a guide to judge whether apple juice is contaminated. The agency has the authority to seize apple juice that exceeds those levels, though it has never done so.

Consumer groups say the FDA's level is too high and isn't enforced with enough urgency. Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, released a study on Wednesday calling for the levels to be as low as 3 parts per billion. The Environmental Protection Agency has set levels for drinking water — it's consumed at much greater quantities than apple juice — at 10 parts per billion.

The Consumer Reports study showed that nine of 88 samples of apple juice taken from grocery stores had more arsenic than the EPA's standard for drinking water. But none of the samples exceeded the FDA's standards for inorganic, or man-made, arsenic.

Urvashi Rangan of the Consumers Union says the group has been in talks with the FDA on the issue and is encouraged by the discussion. Another advocacy group, Food and Water Watch, has lobbied the agency on the issue, and Dr. Mehmet Oz has highlighted the issue on his nationally syndicated daytime show.

"We look at apple and grape juice as a poster child for arsenic in the food supply in general," Rangan said. "Chronic low-level exposure of carcinogen is something we should be concerned about."

Molly Kile, a professor at Oregon State University who has studied arsenic for a decade, says more research is needed to determine whether arsenic levels in juice are a problem.

"It is unclear at this point whether or not the arsenic found in apple juice is safe or unsafe," she said. "And really the question is what do these low levels exposure of arsenic mean in terms of health and children's health?"

So what is the parent of a juice-drinking toddler to do?

All of the experts — including the government and the consumer advocates — agree that drinking small amounts of apple juice isn't harmful. The concern is over the effects of drinking large amounts of juice over long periods of time. Parents with a real concern about arsenic should try to diversify the brands of juice they buy in case one brand tends to have more chemical exposure, Consumers Union says.

Another point of agreement is that children under 6 shouldn't be drinking much juice anyway because it's high in calories. Health experts say children under 6 shouldn't drink any more than 6 ounces of juice a day — about the size of a juice box. Infants under 6 months shouldn't drink any juice at all.

Gail Charnley of the Juice Products Association says the industry regularly tests arsenic levels and will follow the FDA's lead.

"Of course parents have concerns but they should know that the juice producers are committed to safety," she said. "Producers have children who drink juice too."

Oz has said he would still serve juice to his own children, though he strongly believes the government isn't doing enough.

"The absolute safest level for arsenic in your food is zero," he said Wednesday while acknowledging "that is impossible to achieve."

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Find Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

Associated Press

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Daniel Yergin Examines America's 'Quest' For Energy

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Enlarge Ralph Wilson /AP

Workers move a section of well casting at a natural gas well site in Pennsylvania. Energy expert Daniel Yergin says that in addition to trucks and traffic, natural gas production can bring jobs and economic growth to gas-rich areas.

Ralph Wilson /AP Workers move a section of well casting at a natural gas well site in Pennsylvania. Energy expert Daniel Yergin says that in addition to trucks and traffic, natural gas production can bring jobs and economic growth to gas-rich areas.

A television ad running in upstate New York has been warning residents that the state's water supply is headed for ruin.

"New York tap water has always been the best in the world," it says. "In places where gas companies are already using a dangerous process called fracking, like Pennsylvania, the water is cloudy and full of toxic chemicals."

The ad is part of an intensifying debate over hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" — the process energy companies use to get a certain kind of natural gas out of the ground. Fracking is also one of the many subjects energy expert Daniel Yergin covers in his new book, The Quest. Yergin tells NPR's David Greene that the type of natural gas obtained through fracking, the gas found in shale, only recently became a serious energy source for the U.S.

"Shale gas really has been a revolution that's happened extremely rapidly," Yergin says. "Up until 2008, it really wasn't recognized and then it just took off, and it's gone from being virtually none of our natural gas production to about 30 percent of our total natural gas production."

According to Yergin, who sits on a Department of Energy committee that's investigating the environmental impact of fracking, the process has some potential drawbacks: There's the possibility that fracking could increase the amount of methane in the groundwater supply and that equipment and generators used for drilling could lead to increased air pollution.

"The industry itself knows that these are issues that it has to deal with," Yergin says. "So I think we're going to see a lot of innovation and a lot of progress to address environmental questions around this."

Energy, Security, and the Remaking Of The Modern World

by Daniel Yergin

Hardcover, 816 | purchase

close The QuestEnergy, Security, and the Remaking Of The Modern WorldDaniel Yergin

These are all new questions for states like New York and Pennsylvania, which — unlike, say, Texas — are unaccustomed to energy development. Just consider New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo opened the door to shale gas production in the state's poorer regions in hopes that it would spark economic growth.

"It comes down to employment. Shale gas has created hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the last five years in the United States. It's brought $1 billion of revenue into the state government of Pennsylvania," Yergin says. "It does have a transformative impact."

Energy development means more trucks, more traffic and more people working in the energy sector — and that's a lot of change.

"[That's] part of the reason for the response to it," Yergin says. "This is a great resource — this is the biggest energy innovation probably in the last 30 years, that we've seen. But it has to be done in a way that is both environmentally responsible and also acceptable to the public."

A Global Reaction To American Resources

Last March, President Obama stipulated that there could be a century's worth of shale gas beneath our feet in the U.S. That much gas could give the country a measure of security, reducing dependence on foreign sources of energy. But a domestic move toward shale gas could also have global implications.

"My personal quest in writing The Quest was to try and provide a framework to see how these things all tie together," Yergin says. "It has become increasingly interconnected. If you wind the clock back to 2008, the United States was going to be a huge importer of liquefied natural gas from the Middle East, from countries like Trinidad, from Angola, from Nigeria and maybe from Russia. That's all off the table because we're now self-sufficient in terms of natural gas, and suddenly that gas that was going to come in cargoes and ships to the United States has to find other destinations."

Less need for liquefied natural gas in the U.S. means there's more available for Europe, which means, perhaps, that Europe could rely less on Russia for gas.

"But then something else happened somewhere else in the world — this awful, terrible accident at Fukushima in Japan," Yergin says. "What was going to be the nuclear renaissance is now a much, much, much more uncertain thing. The German chancellor, [Angela] Merkel, who was a big advocate for stepping up the nuclear program in Germany, changes her mind really and says, 'We can't do it. We're going to shut down our nuclear power.' What does that mean? They'll import more natural gas. Where will they import it from? Russia."

And so, like dominoes, one country changing its energy strategy can set off reverberations around the world.

Enlarge Jon Chomitz

Daniel Yergin is the author behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.

Jon Chomitz Daniel Yergin is the author behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.

'We Need To Be Diversified'

The availability of a new resource can also raise questions about a country's energy policy. For instance, with so much shale gas available over the next hundred years, should the U.S. bother to keep developing renewable energy? Yergin says yes.

"We need to focus on renewables, to start with, for security reasons [and] for diversification reasons," he says. "I go back to what Winston Churchill, head of the British Royal Navy, said before World War I, when he was converting the Royal Navy from safe British coal to oil from Persia — Iran — and people said, 'This is really dangerous,' and he said, 'Safety in oil [lies] in variety and variety alone.' And I think that's still a fundamental starting point."

But security doesn't only mean protecting the country's oil infrastructure from enemies — it also means protecting the infrastructure from everything else that could happen.

"You know what's going to happen, and everybody agrees on what's going to happen, and then something else happens," Yergin says. "It could be everything from political crisis, as we've seen that affect oil supply, to natural disasters to technological breakthroughs. We have a very complex energy foundation that our $14 trillion economy rests upon."

The recent blackout in California and Arizona, for example, was the result of a chain reaction that started when an electrical worker mistakenly removed a piece of monitoring equipment. Yergin says there's an important lesson to be learned from that blackout.

"In general with energy, given how important it is to our economy, we need to be diversified," he says. "One of the big challenges we have is the growth of demand on a global basis, and there isn't one single solution that provides the answer."

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