Thursday, September 15, 2011

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ: Kids are drinking apple juice laced with arsenic, according to one TV program, and the FDA hasn't done a thing about it. How many other products that we are feeding to our kids, our families, and ourselves are similarly poisoned?

Research isn't always easy to figure out and in order to do it accurately, you have to have special training because the devil is in the details. When that expertise is missing or the purpose of the research is misunderstood, the result can be alarming. Alarm is exactly what went out over the TV airwaves and it reached the point that the FDA not only had to reach out, but they began to advise the media of the problems with the show-sponsored tests of apple juice. Sounds almost like those lie-detector tests they are always doing on TV.

Now, let me add some clarity here. Most of us cook or we eat in restaurants and in many recipes we use there is an ingredient that can kill. What is the ingredient? Simple black pepper and it contains arsenic. Now that I've said that, you may be saying that you'll never use black pepper again, nor will you allow your children or anyone you love to use it. You'll want it banned from food stores, restaurants, cookbooks and even natural food stores. But would that be correct? Did you know that there is more than one type of arsenic and that one is perfectly natural and harmless and the other can kill you? The organic form of arsenic is the one found in pepper and apple juice and a lot of other things and it's the harmless form. In fact, the FDA tells us that arsenic is a naturally occurring substance. Is the FDA trying to deceive us into killing ourselves with the condiments we use? Hardly. It's simple chemistry.

What's my point? A TV show that probably wanted to bump up their ratings, as many do, went after apple juice and said that it contains arsenic. The show seemed to imply that kids were being poisoned and that not only was arsenic in apple juice, but it is in a lot of other things we use and the FDA is not protecting us. Who wouldn't be scared by a statement like that?

What about the testing that was done? Turns out it did find arsenic, but they didn't distinguish how much was the organic and how much was the dangerous inorganic arsenic; they just dumped the results into one number and that set off this false alert. These same samples had been tested by the FDA and the inorganic levels were well below anything considered to be a problem or dangerous to health. But it sure did make headlines, didn't it? Didn't it get your attention? The show's producers rushed to an erroneous judgment based on their own inadequate science backgrounds, I would suspect.

Bad science, bad TV, bad consumer information was the result of this testing. Fear was the driving factor here and it was used in a manner that could only have left an unsettled feeling in viewers. Not everyone will see the explanations. Not everyone will know the truth about this and the problem here and they will go away frightened and, perhaps, have sleepless nights or anxiety attacks. They will believe they have poisoned their kids and that's less than acceptable.

Who is going to undo that effect?

Dr. Patricia A. Farrell, Ph.D.

Licensed Psychologist

Dr. Patricia A. Farrell, Ph.D., LLC

Fort Lee, NJ