Consuming arsenic repeatedly in food, liquids, or a combination thereof, can cause skin, lung, bladder, and liver cancers.  Children are at risk to these cancers and also susceptible to lower IQ as a result of chronic arsenic exposure.  Children are especially vulnerable to arsenic poisoning because they eat and drink more per body weight than adults.  

Testing of juices by the St. Petersburg Times and the University of Arizona has found substantial amounts of arsenic in a wide variety of apple juices and juices that contain apple juices.  Follow-up testing completed by Coming Alongside 6-9 months after the St. Petersburg Times results were reported establishes that arsenic is a pervasive and continuing contaminant in a wide range of apple juices.   While the EPA sets an exposure limit of 10 ppb for drinking water, it provides no comparable exposure limit for other beverages.  However,  the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) sets a more comprehensive exposure limit of 0.3 micrograms of arsenic per kilogram of body weight per day; this exposure limit includes all possible sources of arsenic consumption from both food and beverages and accommodates variations in body type, eating and drinking patterns, and age.   

Like mercury and lead, some forms of arsenic can be more hazardous than others.  Unfortunately, most of the arsenic analyzed by the University of Arizona, Coming Alongside, and the St. Petersburg Times is of the inorganic kind, more hazardous by far than organic arsenic.    Arsenic in apple juice comes from arsenic containing pesticides in the soil, taken up by the apple tree and concentrated in the fruit.   Arsenic is a persistent pollutant, so that even in U.S. soils, where arsenic-based pesticides have been banned for decades, arsenic continues to be present in the soil and is an uptake risk for crops planted in that soil. 

To understand the impact of arsenic in apple crops and ultimately in apple juice, we translate our test results into risk for both adults and children in three typical juice consumption amounts:  Low (less than 25% of recommended fluid intake is in the form of juice), Moderate (50% of fluid intake is juice), and High (85% of fluid intake is juice).  Two classes of apple juice are assessed:  those in Class A contain 0-10 ppb of arsenic and those in Class B contain 10-30 ppb.  Most apple juices tested are at least in Class B.  Any consumption greater than 100% exceeds the recommended exposure limit established by the ATSDR.

Testing Protocol: 

All juices were initially tested with Hach arsenic strip tests which provide semi-quantitative results, indicating levels by range of 0-10 ppb and 10-30 ppb in the tested samples.  Potential interference from sulfides is eliminated with appropriate reagents prior to testing.  Each juice was tested a minimum of four times and the median result calculated for this assessment.   All four tests were conducted for the same batch of a particular apple juice; it is possible that different batches will produce different results.  Three samples were also tested by Everett Environmental Laboratories (Everett, Washington) to ensure accuracy of results to ensure that the Hach color strip testing results were both consistent and accurate to within stated resolution. 

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