HFCS

I got a head start on next week's assignment, and found this article from the journal Environmental Health. Like the IATP study, this work seeks to "determine if high fructose corn syrup contains mercury." The authors report Mercury levels of 0.005 to 0.570 micrograms per gram of HFCS. With average daily consumption levels of "about 50 grams per person in the United States," HFCS may be a previously unconsidered source of mercury exposure. This is of particular interest because mercury exposure in the womb has detrimental affects on fetal development.

The aspect of this article I find most interesting is the authors' discussion of how they decided to conduct this study. Apparently an employee at the Environmental Protection Agency suggested to an Environmental Health Officer that he (or she) contact the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to find out if mercury is present in chemicals manufactured by Vulcan Chemicals. Vulcan and other chemical manufactures keep logs of the amounts of mercury used, and in 2008, Vulcan reported mercury losses via chemical manufacturing. Further investigation revealed that Vulcan manufactures sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) using mercury chlor-alkali cells, and trace amounts of mercury can be found in caustic soda produced this way. Since the NaOH and HCl produced by Vulcan “are primarily used by the high fructose corn syrup industry,” it was only logical to test levels of mercury in HFCS. (Note: I pretty much paraphrased the section of the paper titled “The path of investigation.”)