Arsenic in Apple Juice? Decades Old Practice Gets a New Safety Guideline

We all should know better than to pick up any fruit juice and think that it's packed with pure organic goodness. In fact, if we probably checked the label, we might die of shock. There's likely junk we've never heard of floating around in these containers masquerading as "healthy" products.

According to Dr. David Ludwig, an expert on pediatric obesity at Children's Hospital Boston, via a CBS News article in 2009, he states that "all of these beverages are largely the same. Juice is only minimally better than soda."

And unfortunately, he's probably right. But whether you're drinking Sunny D or Mountain Dew, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is making some new guidelines for a specific fruit juice that may get a harsher reputation than some of its other colorful counterparts: Apple juice.

You might not expect arsenic to be in apple juice. Further to the point, arsenic and apples might sound like the fairy tale Snow White, detailing the encounter with the evil step-mother/sorceress when she tries to put the beautiful Snow White into a coma so she is the fairest in the kingdom.

Well, it turns out, arsenic has been in apple juice for quite some time--10 parts per billion, to be exact, which is the same "action level" set for drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"We have been studying this issue comprehensively, and based on the agency's data and analytical work, the FDA is confident in the overall safety of apple juice for children and adults," Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the FDA, stated in a press release. 

For the last two decades, the FDA has allegedly been monitoring the presence of arsenic in apple juice samples and found that they were consistently low and within the limits.  

However, according to U.S. News World and Report, a new action level will be set that is intended to provide guidance for the beverage industry and possibly prevent consumers from encountering exceptions where arsenic levels could be harmful. (We weren't aware that ANY arsenic was good for you... But what do we know?)

Yet, this has been applauded by non-profit, independent product-testing organization Consumer Reports, which called it a "reasonable first step in protecting consumers from unnecessary exposure to arsenic," according to Reuters.

"This is also a signal that we need to refocus on how we are introducing arsenic into the environment," said Urvashi Rangan, director of consumer safety and sustainability at Consumer Reports. "You want to see that standard get stronger and stronger over time, and we're going to hope to see that with apple juice."

Overexposure to levels of arsenic can affect nearly all of the organs, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry, including such key problems as patchy skin hyperpigmentation, small focal keratosis and other skin conditions, a variety of chronic illnesses, lung, skin, bladder, kidney and other cancers.