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Corn Syrup's Mercury Surprise

 

Are grape jelly and chocolate milk bad for kids' brains?

—By Melinda Wenner

 

 

 

 

July/August 2009 Issue

If the specter of obesity and diabetes wasn't enough to turn you off

high- fructose corn syrup (HFCS), try this: New research suggests that

the sweetener could be tainted with mercury, putting millions of

children at risk for developmental problems.

 

In 2004, Renee Dufault, an environmental health researcher at the Food

and Drug Administration (FDA), stumbled upon an obscure Environmental

Protection Agency report on chemical plants' mercury emissions. Some

chemical companies, she learned, make lye by pumping salt through

large vats of mercury. Since lye is a key ingredient in making HFCS

(it's used to separate corn starch from the kernel), Dufault wondered

if mercury might be getting into the ubiquitous sweetener that makes

up 1 out of every 10 calories Americans eat.

 

 

 

 

 

Dufault sent HFCS samples from three manufacturers that used lye to

labs at the University of California-Davis and the National Institute

of Standards and Technology. The labs found mercury in most of the

samples. In September 2005, Dufault presented her findings to the

FDA's center for food safety. She was surprised by what happened next.

" I was instructed not to do any more investigation, " she recalls. FDA

spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek says that the agency decided against

further investigation because it wasn't convinced " that there was any

evidence of a risk. "

 

At first, Dufault was reluctant to pursue the matter. But eventually,

she became frustrated enough to try to publish the findings herself.

She had her 20 original samples retested; mercury was found in nearly

half of them. In January, Dufault and her coauthors—eight scientists

from various universities and medical centers—published the findings

in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health. Although they

weren't able to determine what type of mercury was present, they

concluded that if it was organic, the most dangerous form, then based

on average hfcs consumption, individuals could be ingesting as much as

200 micrograms of the neurotoxin per week—three times more than the

amount the fda deems safe for children, pregnant women, women who plan

to become pregnant, and nursing mothers.

 

But the FDA and the Corn Refiners Association, an industry trade

group, claim there's nothing to worry about. The group hired ChemRisk,

the consulting firm whose scientists testified on behalf of a

polluting utility in the lawsuit portrayed in Erin Brockovich, to

analyze Dufault's report. ChemRisk criticized Dufault for not

specifying the type of mercury her tests had found. This, the

consultants said, was key, since mercury poses different risks

depending on its chemical form. In its unadulterated elemental state,

mercury is relatively safe to ingest—the body absorbs only about a

tenth of a percent of it. Inorganic forms of mercury, such as

cinnabar, are more easily absorbed and therefore more dangerous than

elemental. Organic forms, like methylmercury, which originate from

fossil-fuel emissions and build up in the fatty tissue of tuna and

other kinds of fish, are the worst; readily absorbed, they can

cumulatively damage the brain and nervous system.

 

Though it provides no scientific evidence to back up this assertion,

the FDA says that the mercury in Dufault's HFCS samples is elemental.

But the lab that analyzed the samples believes there's a good chance

the mercury is organic. The analysts " said in so many words, 'It

doesn't look like inorganic,' " says Peter Green, Dufault's UC-Davis

colleague who coordinated with the lab. " They would even say it's more

likely not the regular elemental mercury. "

 

The corn-syrup industry claims that no HFCS manufacturers currently

use mercury-grade lye, though it concedes some used to. (According to

the EPA, four plants still use the technology.) It says that its own

tests found no traces of mercury in HFCS samples from US

manufacturers, including a number of samples from some of the same

sources Dufault tested. But hundreds of foreign plants still use

mercury to make lye—which may then be used to make foods for export.

Already, 11 percent of the sweeteners and candy on the US market are

imported.

 

At around the same time that she published her study, Dufault also

learned of a report issued by the Minnesota-based Institute for

Agriculture and Trade Policy, which found low levels of mercury in 16

common food products, including certain brands of kid-favored foods,

like grape jelly and chocolate milk. Researchers haven't proven that

the mercury in the foods came from HFCS, but internist Jane Hightower,

who coauthored the Environmental Health study, points out that it

ultimately doesn't matter how it got there: The FDA has allegedly

known about the mercury-contaminated hfcs for nearly four years and

" should already have an answer for us based on science and not

speculation, " she says. The agency says it has no plans for further

testing unless additional evidence of harm emerges in outside

scientific literature. But the issue has been getting some attention

in Congress—a bill proposed in April would require plants that once

employed the technology to report how much mercury they used.

 

Dufault retired from the FDA in January 2008, after the agency began

taking her off her field projects. " All of a sudden, they wanted me to

sit in the office, " she says. She moved to Hawaii, but she hasn't

exactly been lounging on the beach. She recently finished a paper,

currently in the peer-review process, that explores why children and

fetuses are more sensitive to mercury than adults. She also teaches

second- and third-graders with learning disabilities. " I worked for an

organization that allowed stuff to go on that probably impacted these

children, " she says. " I look at this as doing penance. "

 

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Melinda Wenner is a freelance writer.

 

" Hobbes: Do you think there's a God? Calvin: Well, SOMEBODY'S out to get me. "