Food Commonly Imported From China--Like Apple Juice and Rice--Poses a Stunning Health Risk

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/food-commonly-imported-china-apple-juice-and-rice-poses-stunning-health-risk




Heavy metal pollution makes no distinction between how crops are grown. Irrespective of whether farming practices are organic or conventional practices are used, if the likes of cadmium, arsenic, lead, nickel and mercury are in the soil, water or air they can contaminate food and poison the people who consume it. With enough exposure, heavy metals can build up in the body, causing chronic problems in the skin, intestine, nervous system, kidneys, liver, and brain. Some heavy metals occur naturally in soil, but rarely at toxic levels, while human activities like mining, manufacturing and the use of synthetic materials like paint, and even some agricultural chemicals, can release heavy metals into the air and water, and from there they find their way to the soil. And once in the soil, heavy metals are virtually impossible to remove.

China acknowledged last April that a staggering one-fifth of its arable land is seriously polluted with heavy metals, thanks to decades of aggressive industrial development. China’s Environmental Protection Ministry looked at data sampled between 2006 and 2013 and described the situation as “not optimistic.” The most commonly found heavy metals were cadmium, nickel and arsenic. The revelation came after months of speculation about the report, which at one point was not going to be released as the results were considered to be a “ State Secret.”

Cadmium, one of the metals found in high concentrations in Chinese soil, is one of the most toxic heavy metal pollutants. It moves through soil layers with ease, and is taken up by a variety of plants, including leafy vegetables, root crops, cereals and grains. Last year it was discovered that nearly half of the rice for sale in the southern China city of Guangzhou was tainted with cadmium, which caused a major uproar.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. The Chinese garlic in the store costs about half price. I won't buy it for food safety reasons. nt

[DeSwiss]

2. K&R

- A lot of those heavy metals are coming back home to the West in a different form of consumer products.....

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[aint_no_life_nowhere]

8. That looks more horrific than any horror film

Waste materials on that scale are just devastating. I hope more and more people favor us reducing population growth and the conversion of the planet's resources into trash.

[djean111]

3. And the TPP will do away with country of origin labels, I believe.

http://www.exposethetpp.org/TPPImpacts_FoodSafety.html

Under the TPP, food labels could also be challenged as "trade barriers." The TPP would impose limits on labels providing information on where a food product comes from. The TPP also would endanger labels identifying genetically modified foods and labels identifying how food was produced. TPP would expand the limits on consumer labels already included in existing "trade" agreements, like the World Trade Organization (WTO). But already under the WTO, the U.S. dolphin-safe tuna fish label and our country-of-origin meat and poultry labels have been successfully attacked by other countries. And, under TPP, a foreign meat processing or food corporation operating within the United States could directly challenge our policies that they claim undermine their expected future profits - meaning a barrage of new attacks.

I stopped buying garlic that does not state grown in the USA, and stopped buying apple juice unless labeled product of USA.
Honey is tricky too - honey, and some other foods, are shipped to the USA and other countries and packaged there, so the origin is not clear.

[n2doc]

4. I've gotten to the point where I only buy honey from locals

Last year my daughter went to a summer camp on beekeeping. Best part was getting honey she had collected herself from local hives.

[Quantess]

5. Chinese honey isn't even real. It's mostly corn syrup.

[djean111]

6. And I have eliminated corn and corn products from my diet.

I do not buy much in the way of processed food, so it is easy to avoid it.
Local honey is really the only way to go.

[Quantess]

7. Support your local beekeepers.

They are doing us all a service.

[Faux pas]

9. When the dog food poisoning was revealed

a couple of years back, it dawned on me that the Chinese don't have to bomb us. They can just kill us off slowly with poison. Dastardly.