I wrote a diary on this yesterday, and frankly it fascinates me, even though there were a few people here who saw no problem whatsoever in the industry's allowing mercury contaminated high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in food just because it was cheaper than mercury free HFCS...
Anyway, I found another potential gem in the report by the FDA environmental health officer that makes me think there might be more to this story than meets the eye.
First, a little back story on how the FDA investigation came into being.
Apparently, the particular method that some in the industry use to manufacture caustic soda involves mercury...I don't mean the amount of mercury in a thermometer, nor the amount emitted from a coal plant....but a LOT of mercury:
from the Environmental Health article:
In 2003 the EPA reported in the Federal Register that on average approximately seven tons of mercury were missing from each plant in the year 2000 [3]. These chlor-alkali plants have an average of fifty-six cells, each containing as much as 8,000 pounds of mercury [4] and, every year the chlor-alkali industry reports unaccounted for mercury losses to the EPA [5].
[snip....]
An Environmental Health Officer (EHO) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted an investigation to find the missing mercury in the chlor-alkali industry [7]. [emphasis is mine]
Now, on to the little gem.
According to an archived web page report initially produced by Vulcan Chemicals, mercury grade caustic soda and hydrochloric acid are primarily used by the high fructose corn syrup industry [9]. Following this lead, the EHO conducted an interview with an "organic" producer of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in 2004 and was told that the HFCS industry uses both mercury grade caustic soda and membrane grade caustic soda in their manufacturing process to enhance product shelf life. A review of the literature revealed that HFCS is indeed used as a sweetener by food manufacturers to stabilize food products and enhance product shelf life [10].
Now let me get this straight. First of all, the fact that there is mercury in the caustic soda is basically an open secret. They don't advertise it, but it is right there on their product information sheet, right there at the bottom, maximum mercury content 0.50 ppm (link, warning PDF). But according to the FDA interview, they intentionally use a mix of HFCS made from mercury grade caustic soda and membrane grade caustic soda to prolong shelf life.
Now I know that thimerosal, which contains an ethyl mercury group, was used as an anti-fungal additive to vaccines for years...only to be recently removed under a firestorm of controversy. A casual google search turned up an FDA report which listed two other mercury compounds used in pharmaceuticals as additives.
The 32 products contained the following mercury compounds as inactive ingredients used as a preservative: 27 contained thimerosal (TM), 4 contained phenylmercuric acetate (PMA),and 1 contained phenylmercuric nitrate (PMN). TM was used in the 13 ophthalmic and otic products at the following concentrations: 0.001% (5 products), 0.002% (1 product), 0.004% (2 products), 0.005% (2 products), and 0.01% (3 products). TM was used in 10 nasal spray/drop products at 0.00025% (3 products), 0.001% (6 products), and 0.002% (1 product). The 2 topical products contained 0.01% TM, and the 2 hyaluronidase injection products contained 0.075 or 0.1 milligram (mg) TM per 150 United States Pharmacopeia (USP) units of drug (0.01%).
I was chided in my article yesterday because the overall amount of contamination in the processed food products was very low, even though reports of raw HFCS mercury contamination was found a levels approaching 0.5 ppm. We know HFCS is used, first because it is cheap, and second because it leads to a longer shelf life than cane sugar. So, what is going on here?
While the Obama administration has called for an end to the chlor-alkali (mercury process) caustic soda being used in food production by 2012, what I am more interested in knowing is exactly who knew about the mercury, when they knew it, and whether they intentionally chose to add it to products they marketed to children in order to make a few more $$$$.
[Update]
I'm off to finish up my dissertation research, so I most likely won't be around to reply as this scrolls off the diary list. I will try to check back in later, so if you are interested enough to check your comments tab even after this scrolls into the abyss, sometimes I howl at the moon that way, you know?