Tag: mercury
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Report Purportedly Finds Toxic Chemicals in 95% of Baby Food
Healthy Babies Bright Futures has released a report describing tests it commissioned on 168 varieties of baby food from 61 brands reportedly finding that 95% of the products contained traces of arsenic, lead, cadmium or mercury, with 26% of products containing all four heavy metals. The organization asserts that rice puff snacks, teething biscuits, infant…
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EFSA Reevaluates Silicon Dioxide Safety
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued a scientific opinion reevaluating the safety of silicon dioxide used as a food additive, concluding that the available information is insufficient to confirm the current acceptable daily intake. The panel reportedly found no indication of adverse effects or genotoxicity, but it questioned a long-term study indicating silicon dioxide…
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Failure-to-Warn Claims Against Tuna Co. Not Preempted, Says Federal Court
Granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss in part, a federal court in New York has allowed further proceedings on most of the claims filed by a man who alleged that consuming one to two cans of tuna daily for more than two years caused his mercury poisoning. Porrazzo v. Bumble Bee Foods, LLC, No. 10-4367…
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Advocacy Groups Seek FDA Rule on Mercury in Seafood
Several consumer protection organizations have filed a citizen petition with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seeking a rulemaking “for labeling and point of sale advisories concerning mercury in seafood to minimize methylmercury exposure to women of childbearing age and children.” According to the petition, some 200,000 children in the United States, between ages two…
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Media Focuses on Neurodevelopmental Disorders Linked to Pesticides, Mercury
“Forty years before it was removed from paint, pediatricians had enough evidence of lead’s ability to maim children’s brains—catastrophically and irreversibly—to warrant discussion in a medical textbook,” opines Sandra Steingraber in the March/April 2011 edition of Orion Magazine, where she posits that not only is the developing brain more vulnerable than the adult brain to…
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No Link Between Dietary Mercury Exposure and Cardiovascular Disease, Says New Study
A recent study based on toenail clippings has reportedly turned up “no evidence” of any link between dietary mercury exposure and coronary heart disease, stroke, or total cardiovascular disease. Dariush Mozaffarian, et al., “Mercury Exposure and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in Two U.S. Cohorts,” New England Journal of Medicine, March 24, 2011. Researchers evidently used toenail…
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FDA Issues Final Rule on Alternative Temperature-Indicating Devices for Low-Acid Foods
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a final rule amending its regulations “for thermally-processed low-acid foods packaged in hermetically sealed containers to allow other temperature-indicating devices, in addition to mercury-in-glass thermometers, during processing.” The final rule follows from a March 14, 2007, proposal covered in Issue 207 of this Update. Effective March 5, 2012,…
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California Lawmakers Propose Ban on Possession, Sale of Shark Fins
California State Assemblymen Paul Fong (D-Cupertino) and Jared Huffman (D- San Rafael) have introduced a bill (A.B. 376) that would prohibit the possession, sale, trade, and distribution of shark fins. Apparently in demand for shark fin soup, “the ingredient is very high in mercury and the FDA warns that it could be dangerous to consumers’…