Toxic Levels of Arsenic Found in Popular Juice Brands pt5

From yahoo.com:

A Chronic Problem

Arsenic has been notoriously used as a poison since ancient times. A fatal poisoning would require a single dose of inorganic arsenic about the weight of a postage stamp. But chronic toxicity can result from long-term exposure to much lower levels in food, and even to water that meets the 10-ppb drinking-water limit.

A 2004 study of children in Bangladesh suggested diminished intelligence based on test scores in children exposed to arsenic in drinking water at levels above 5 ppb, says study author Joseph Graziano, Ph.D., a professor of environmental health sciences and pharmacology at Columbia University. He’s now conducting similar research with children living in New Hampshire and Maine, where arsenic levels of 10 to 100 ppb are commonly found in well water, to determine whether better nutrition in the United States affects the results.

People with private wells may face greater risks than those on public systems because they’re responsible for testing and treating their own water. In Maine, where almost half the population relies on private wells, the USGS found arsenic levels in well water as high as 3,100 ppb.

And a study published in 2011 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health examined the long-term effects of low-level exposure on more than 300 rural Texans whose groundwater was estimated to have arsenic at median levels below the federal drinking-water standard. It found that exposure was related to poor scores in language, memory, and other brain functions.

“I suspect there is an awful lot of chronic, low-level arsenic poisoning going on that’s never properly diagnosed.”—Michael Harbut, M.D.

Toxic Levels of Arsenic Found in Popular Juice Brands pt4

Answering a Crucial Question

We also wanted to know whether people who drink juice end up being exposed to more arsenic than those who don’t.

So we commissioned an analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), conducted annually by the National Center for Health Statistics. Information is collected on the health and nutrition of a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population, based on interviews and physical exams that may include a blood or urine test. Officials and researchers often use the data to determine risk factors for major diseases and develop public health policy. In fact, data on lead in the blood of NHANES participants were instrumental in developing policies that have successfully resulted in lead being removed from gasoline.

Our analysis was led by Richard Stahlhut, M.D., M.P.H., an environmental health researcher at the University of Rochester with expertise in NHANES data, working with Consumer Reports statisticians. Ana Navas-Acien, M.D., Ph.D., a physician—epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, also provided guidance. She was the lead author of a 2008 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that first linked low-level arsenic exposure with the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the United States.

Stahlhut reviewed NHANES data from 2003 through 2008 from participants tested for total urinary arsenic who reported their food and drink consumption for 24 hours the day before their NHANES visit. Because most ingested arsenic is excreted in urine, the best measure of recent exposure is a urine test.

Following Navas-Acien’s advice, we excluded from our NHANES analysis anyone with results showing detectable levels of arsenobetaine, the organic arsenic in seafood. That made the results we analyzed more likely to represent inorganic arsenic, of greatest concern in terms of potential health risks.

The resulting analysis of almost 3,000 study participants found that those reporting apple-juice consumption had on average 19 percent greater levels of total urinary arsenic than those subjects who did not, and those who reported drinking grape juice had 20 percent higher levels. The results might understate the correlation between juice consumption and urinary arsenic levels because NHANES urinary data exclude children younger than 6, who tend to be big juice drinkers.

“The current analysis suggests that these juices may be an important contributor to dietary arsenic exposure,” says Keeve Nachman, Ph.D., a risk scientist at the Center for a Livable Future and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, both at Johns Hopkins University. “It would be prudent to pursue measures to understand and limit young children’s exposures to arsenic in juice.”

Robert Wright, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of pediatrics and environmental health at Harvard University who specializes in research on the effect of heavy-metals exposure in children, says that findings from our juice tests and database analysis concern him: “Because of their small size, a child drinking a box of juice would consume a larger per-body-weight dose of arsenic than an adult drinking the exact same box of juice. Those brands with elevated arsenic should investigate the source and eliminate it.”

Toxic Levels of Arsenic Found in Popular Juice Brands pt 2

From yahoo.com

Other Dietary Exposures

In addition to juice, foods including chicken, rice, and even baby food have been found to contain arsenic—sometimes at higher levels than the amounts found in juice. Brian Jackson, Ph.D., an analytical chemist and research associate professor at Dartmouth College, presented his findings at a June 2011 scientific conference in Aberdeen, Scotland. He reported finding up to 23 ppb of arsenic in lab tests of name-brand jars of baby food, with inorganic arsenic representing 70 to 90 percent of those total amounts.

Similar results turned up in a 2004 study conducted by FDA scientists in Cincinnati, who found arsenic levels of up to 24 ppb in baby food, with sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans, and peaches containing only the inorganic form. A United Kingdom study published in 2008 found that the levels of inorganic arsenic in 20-ounce packets of dried infant rice cereals ranged from 60 to 160 ppb. Rice-based infant cereals are often the first solid food that babies eat.

Rice frequently contains high levels of inorganic arsenic because it is among plants that are unusually efficient at taking up arsenic from the soil and incorporating it in the grains people eat. Moreover, much of the rice produced in the U.S. is grown in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas, on land formerly used to grow cotton, where arsenical pesticides were used for decades.

“Initially, in some regions rice planted there produced little grain due to these arsenical pesticides, but farmers then bred a type of rice specifically designed to produce high yields on the contaminated soil,” says Andrew Meharg, professor of biogeochemistry at the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland. Meharg studies human exposures to arsenic in the environment. His research over the past six years has shown that U.S. rice has among the highest average inorganic arsenic levels in the world—almost three times higher than levels in Basmati rice imported from low-arsenic areas of Nepal, India, and Pakistan. Rice from Egypt has the lowest levels of all.

Infant rice cereal for the U.S. market is generally made from U.S. rice, Meharg says, but labeling usually doesn’t specify country of origin. He says exposure to arsenic through infant rice cereals could be reduced greatly if cereal makers used techniques that don’t require growing rice in water-flooded paddies or if they obtained rice from low-arsenic areas. His 2007 study found that median arsenic levels in California rice were 41 percent lower than levels in rice from the south-central U.S.

Questionable Traffic Stops Caught On Camera

Questionable Police Stop

By Phil Williams
Chief Investigative Reporter

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — NewsChannel 5’s cameras caught a police stop in progress, and it is now at the center of an internal police investigation.

It’s the result of a NewsChannel 5 investigation into interstate drug agents who stop lots of out-of-state drivers west of Nashville, looking for drugs or — more often — drug money.

Now, the head of one of those agencies tellsNewsChannel 5 Investigates that he wants to make sure all of those stops are legal.

“It’s got to a legitimate, lawful stop,” said Dickson Police Chief Ricky Chandler.

Chandler chairs the board of the 23rd Judicial District Drug Task Force and serves on the board of the Dickson Interdiction and Criminal Enforcement (DICE) unit, both of which patrol a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 40 west of Nashville.

For a whole day, NewsChannel 5 Investigateswent on patrol with DICE officers, seeing how traffic violations searches that they hope will yield drugs or, like in one case, a stash of more than $200,000 of suspected drug money.

A DICE officer told us that the traffic stop is key.

“We’re not allowed to pull over anybody just for the sake of pulling them over,” he said.

But NewsChannel 5 Investigates was also watching from Sky 5 and had questions about this stop where a supervisor from the 23rd pulled over two Hispanic men in an SUV with Texas plates.

His explanation was caught on his in-car video:

“Hey, the reason why I stopped you was you were coming outside your lane of travel. I don’t know if you’re getting sleepy or you’re not drinking are you?”

Yet, our camera had been tracking that same supervisor and captured the exact moment that he put on his brakes — just as he was about to pass the Texas vehicle. The video shows that the SUV was squarely between the lines.

For almost two minutes, the interdiction vehicle trailed the Texas SUV. While the officer himself was all over the road, it was another story for the two Hispanic men.

We showed the video to Chief Chandler.

“[On] the tape, it was not weaving. It did not cross the line — you’re right,” he said.

“He never weaved once, did he?” we asked.

“No, he stayed within his lane of traffic.”

NewsChannel 5 Investigates obtained other videos from that same 23rd Drug Task Force supervisor, where he stopped out-of-state drivers and never even told them that they violated any traffic laws.

“I can’t explain,” Chandler said. “He should be doing that. He’s been trained. He knows how to do that, and he should be doing that.”

Still, neither of the agencies operating in the Dickson area have their cameras set to record the traffic violations that make the stops legal.

“From their perspective, I don’t know how it would benefit them to record that,” said Nashville attorney Dominic Leonardo.

Leonardo said that a defense lawyer could use such video to fight a case. But, without it, it’s the out-of-state driver’s word against the word of a sworn police officer.

“If you have no other evidence there, then chances are the person who’s hearing this case over the seizure of money or the criminal aspect if there [are] criminal charges brought, the police officer is going to win,” he added.

Then, after the traffic stop comes the part where, if officers have suspicions about a driver, even if they don’t really have a legal reason to search the vehicle, there’s nothing to stop them from trying to persuade the person to let them search.

Take, for example, a stop observed from Sky 5 where an out-of-state driver was detained for more than 20 minutes while agents from the 23rd searched his car.

“This is a very fine line between a good stop where there may be a bust to it — or basically a legit guy and a complaint,” that same supervisor told a fellow officer.

He suggested that they use the driver’s claim that he has worked with police as an interpreter.

“Play it off like he’s one of us. Hey, if you could do us a favor, if I get another search out of the way, I get to go to lunch.”

NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Chandler if it is “OK to trick people into consenting to searches.”

“Power of persuasion and tricking are two different things,” the chief answered, “and I think you’ve got to be able to be persuasive to get searches if you’ve got hunches.”

In another case, the supervisor bluffed the passenger in a car.

“Would there be any reason why we might have received a phone call and been told that this vehicle was transporting a large amount of cash?” he asked.

In fact, it was a lie — and the search found nothing.

We noted to Chandler that the two agencies are “pulling lots of people off the interstate,” applying the same techniques. “Is there any part of that that bothers you?”

“No,” he said, “as long as it’s a legal traffic stop.”

As for the questionable traffic stop caught by Sky 5, “Rest assured, if I can get a copy of this tape it will be looked into…. That doesn’t look good at all.”

NewsChannel 5 provided Chandler with a copy of the video and posted it online here. (At one point, the Texas SUV moves out of the frame — except for the left mirror which can be seen tracking the dotted, white line.)

Chandler said he’s also looking at other policy changes are needed.

E-mail: pwilliams@newschannel5.com 

Back to NC5 Investigates: Policing for Profit

Man With 4th Amendment Written on Chest Sues Over Airport Arrest

By David Kravets

March 14, 2011  | 

6:25 pm  

A 21-year-old Virginia man who wrote an abbreviated version of the Fourth Amendment on his body and stripped to his shorts at an airport security screening area is demanding $250,000 in damages for being detained on a disorderly conduct charge.

          Government photo of Aaron Tobey being held at Richmond International Airport on December 30

Aaron Tobey claims in a civil rights lawsuit (.pdf) that in December he was handcuffed and held for about 90 minutes by the Transportation Security Administration at the Richmond International Airport after he began removing his clothing to display on his chest a magic-marker protest of airport security measures.

“Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated,” his chest and gut read.

The University of Cincinnati student didn’t want to go through the advanced imaging technology X-ray machines that are cropping up at airports nationwide. Instead, when it was his turn to be screened, he was going to opt for an intrusive pat-down — and remove most of his clothing in the process.

“He went there knowing he would not do the advanced imaging and do the pat-down instead,” his attorney, James Knicely, said in a telephone interview. “He was making it easy for them and in the process he wanted to communicate his objection for doing so.”

Among other things, the federal lawsuit claims wrongful detention and a breach of the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment. “He was held there for 90 minutes, and handcuffed behind his back,” Knicely said.

Tobey was on his way to Wisconsin for his grandmother’s funeral. Despite his detainment, he made his flight.

According to the suit, while under interrogation on December 30, the authorities wanted to know “about his affiliation with, or knowledge of, any terrorist organizations, if he had been asked to do what he did by any third party, and what his intentions and goals were.”

Two weeks later, Henrico County prosecutors dropped the misdemeanor charge.

Where Does Your Tax Money Go?

TheTruthwillrise | November 17, 2010 | 1 likes, 0 dislikes

Everything you have been told about the income tax is wrong. I share the information contained in the Grace Commission Report.

Search Engine ” Grace Commission Report”
“IRS Publication 6200”

follow on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/truthwillrise

 

 

Democrats AND Republicans are the problem

TheTruthwillrise | October 26, 2010 | 0 likes, 0 dislikes

It’s not one party or the other to blame for the state of things in this nation, it is BOTH parties!

Ron Paul Blasts TSA on Sean Hannity Show

RonPaul2008dotcom | November 23, 2010 | 127 likes, 1 dislikes

Please like, share, subscribe & comment! http://www.RonPaul.com http://www.Hannity.com

Ron Paul appeared on the Sean Hannity Show to discuss the American Dignity Traveler Act of 2010 which aims to protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse by federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees conducting screenings at the nation’s airports.

11/22/2010

—

Ron Paul is America’s leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, a return to sound monetary policies, and a sensible foreign policy that puts America first.

For more information visit the following websites:

http://www.RonPaul.com
http://www.RonPaulNews.com
http://www.CampaignForLiberty.com
http://www.house.gov/paul
http://www.DailyPaul.com
http://www.RonPaulForums.com
http://www.RonPaul2012podcast.com

 

 

(Tenn Rep) John J. Duncan Jr Gives His Take on The New Congress – Alex Jones Tv

TheAlexJonesChannel | November 24, 2010 | 78 likes, 2 dislikes

WASHINGTON — Congressman John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.) blasted the Transportation Security Administration Wednesday during a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives for invasive “pat-downs” of U.S. citizens and the role lucrative government contracts played in the use of body scanning machines at airport checkpoints.

Duncan, former Chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee and the current top Republican on the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, said: “Unfortunately, for the traveling public, big brother never makes a mistake, so I am not surprised they are trying to defend the purchase of these scanners.”

Mr. Speaker:

A nationwide revolt is developing over the body scanners at the airports, and it should.

Hundreds of thousands of frequent fliers who fly each week are upset about getting these frequent doses of radiation.

Parents are upset about being forced to have their children radiated or being touched inappropriately by an unrelated adult.

There is already plenty of security at the airport, but now we are going to spend up to $300 million to install 1,000 scanners.

This is much more about money than it is about security.

The former Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, represents Rapiscan, the company which is selling these scanners to his former department.

Far too many federal contracts are sweetheart, insider deals.

Companies hire former high ranking federal officials, and then magically, those companies get hugely profitable federal contracts.

The American people should not have to choose between having full-body radiation or a very embarrassing, intrusive pat-down every time they fly, as if they were criminals.

We need a little more balance and common sense on this.
http://duncan.house.gov/
http://www.infowars.com/
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/

 

Webster Tarpley: Manufactured Terrorism & The N/S Korea Staged Crisis – Alex Jones Tv

TheAlexJonesChannel | November 24, 2010 | 232 likes, 5 dislikes

Today is Opt-Out Day, China and Russia quit the dollar, and more will be discussed as Alex covers developing news stories. Guests include: Webster Tarpley