Arsenic in Chicken

[liveonearth]

About a year ago I had my hair tested and found out that I have above "normal" mercury levels (I think because I eat sashimi) and even higher levels of arsenic in my body. Someone told me that I could have gotten the arsenic in my body from the chicken that I ate, but at the time I didn't find anything online about it. I checked my water sources and it wasn't in there. I learned that you can get arsenic poisoning from automotive smog, and I do live in a Dell downwind of two interstate highways.

Today Mercola has an article up about arsenic poisoning in chicken: it may be common.

http://v.mercola.com/blogs/public_blog/Is-the-Chicken-You-Eat-Poisoned-With-Arsenic--10528.aspx

Comments

[quayme.livejournal.com]

Do you think the mercury may have come from living in O.R. as a child? You know the creeks there have it in it.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't know about mercury in the creeks. I remember when there was a "spill" from Tennessee Chemical Plant into the Ocoee and the guys with suits and long hose vaccums came to suck up the river bottom. It wasn't in the news but I was there.

Is mercury in OR tap water? I didn't drink the creeks. Tell me more about what creeks have it, and the source? I didn't know. But I'm not surprised. I remember when my dad got into checking wells for pollutants and found that everything was everywhere around the plants.

It takes less than the head of a pin sized bit of mercury to be totally guaranteed lethal to a human who ingests it.

Mercury is in all fish these days, and it's more concentrated in fish that are carnivorous (because it bio-accumulates) and also in fish near the equator--there is less coal-burning exhaust near the poles. It is the burning of coal for power that is polluting our fish with mercury. I'm sure the fish downwind of Bull Run Steam Plant are toxic as hell. So I eat more fish than I should, esp tuna which is top of the food chain....but I have cut back. I'm sure I'm taking in some mercury that way...are you?

[quayme.livejournal.com]

The creek from Y-12 that ran into downtown Oak Ridge next to city hall through the park and on over towards the city pool was full of it years ago. I you look at it today there are still warnings it keep out of it due to chemical polutaints. They spent years cleaning up the mercury. I also am starting to believe that the fall out of power plants is dusting the polar caps with soot and that is to blame for a good majority of icecap melting glacial melting and such. If the mercury is in the soot it still concemtrated at the poles but it is still on the surface of the ice and has not gotten into the sealife. Just my thoughts.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Interesting thoughts. I agree that soot on the ice is exacerbating the melting, and I don't know how much mercury is in the soot, or what it takes to turn it to ethyl mercury which is the dangerous form. I do know that the fish near the poles are the least contaminated--that has been tested a lot--so it's not in the water and food chain as much up there yet. Your theory could be true. We'll know as soon as the polar ice caps melt.