Another Reason to Steer Away from HFCS?

Earlier this week, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy published a report of laboratory analyses for mercury in food products containing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The report can be linked here. A table with the analytical results can be linked here. In addition, a preliminary report of analyses of batches of HFCS has been published in the Open Access journal Environmental Health. It seems that chemicals used in processing HFCS, and that are manufactured using a mercury chlor-alkali process, are contaminated with traces of mercury. There’s a little flurry about this in the news (this article in the Guardian is pretty informative), but it doesn’t look like anyone has cranked the mercury concentrations through a risk assessment to see how significant the contamination is.

I will be interested in what the risks look like once someone gets around to assessing them. Of course, I’m still thinking that the best reason to stay away from HFCS has nothing to do with the contaminants.