Health Ranger - Mike Adams - Science DECEPTION: Can foods test "positive" for arsenic?
Aired: 2018-07-16
Duration: 10:49


=== Tests Positive Deception (08:38) ===

[00:00:00]  All right, this is a preview announcement about what I have come to decide is a real deception in science, and I need to go public with this.
[00:00:08]  I'm going to do a full video about it, but this is just kind of a preview podcast, and it concerns the issue of an independent nonprofit laboratory out there reporting that certain foods are testing, quote, positive for arsenic.
[00:00:27]  And I don't remember the name of this group.
[00:00:28]  It's like the food clean labels or food labels or green labels or something.
[00:00:34]  And I understand they're trying to do a good thing by raising awareness about arsenic.
[00:00:39]  But to say that a food test positive for arsenic, I've thought about this a lot.
[00:00:45]  And I've talked with my colleagues in my laboratory.
[00:00:48]  And we all agree that such a statement is extremely deceptive and total quack science.
[00:00:55]  Why is that?
[00:00:56]  Well, the word positive means that it contains at least one element of that when you're talking about an element or one atom of it.
[00:01:06]  And the word positive is deceptive in that context because positive is usually used for testing athletes for drugs, for example, or other similar uses where there is a specific compound drug that is often a synthetic molecule.
[00:01:21]  It's not an element.
[00:01:22]  It's a molecule.
[00:01:22]  So it's made up of many elements, and it's a synthetic molecule with a very specific pharmacological purpose.
[00:01:30]  And you can say that an athlete tests positive for a, let's say, a performance-enhancing drug.
[00:01:37]  That makes sense in that context.
[00:01:38]  But to say that a food tests positive for arsenic does not make sense because there is at least one atom of arsenic in every piece of food everywhere.
[00:01:51]  And thus, everything tests positive for arsenic.
[00:01:54]  In other words, it's total junk science to claim that, in their case, baby food tests positive for arsenic.
[00:02:02]  Well, of course baby food tests positive for arsenic.
[00:02:04]  So do watermelons.
[00:02:06]  So do grapes.
[00:02:07]  So do oranges.
[00:02:08]  So does your hair, by the way.
[00:02:10]  There's arsenic in your hair, I guarantee you.
[00:02:12]  And if you have a sensitive enough heavy metals instrument, you can see it.
[00:02:17]  And we do run heavy metals analysis using ICP-MS, and I can detect arsenic below a part per billion, by the way.
[00:02:27]  And as a result, I can find arsenic in almost everything.
[00:02:31]  Does that mean everything tests positive for arsenic?
[00:02:34]  Well, technically, yes, but that's why that term is scientific quackery when used with elements.
[00:02:40]  That's very important for those of you who maybe aren't highly experienced in laboratory analysis, just to make sure you understand the difference between an element and a molecule.
[00:02:50]  An element is something from the table of elements.
[00:02:53]  It is atomic.
[00:02:55]  It's an atomic unit of matter.
[00:02:57]  It's the very basic building block Of matter until you get down to the subatomic particles, you know, quarks and all that.
[00:03:06]  We're talking elements are things like aluminum or gold, silver, zinc, selenium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen.
[00:03:17]  Hydrogen is an element.
[00:03:19]  Now, you wouldn't say that, oh, this food tests positive for carbon.
[00:03:23]  That would sound stupid because there's carbon in everything.
[00:03:27]  You know, I mean, everything that's food.
[00:03:30]  I guess you might say salt doesn't have carbon.
[00:03:35]  And you might say salt is a food.
[00:03:37]  So I guess there could be a few exceptions for inorganic crystalline lattice structures such as sodium chloride.
[00:03:43]  But for common foods, you know, fruits and vegetables and things, everything has carbon in it.
[00:03:49]  Almost everything that's a food has oxygen in it.
[00:03:54]  Because oxygen is part of water.
[00:03:56]  So water, you know, you wouldn't say, oh, we tested water and all this water tested positive for oxygen.
[00:04:02]  No, because oxygen is part of water.
[00:04:06]  So it doesn't make any sense to say that it tests positive for oxygen.
[00:04:12]  You see what I'm saying?
[00:04:13]  H2O, the O is oxygen.
[00:04:15]  So when these labs, it's very important for all these science labs to To be accurate in what they are asserting here.
[00:04:24]  And this is why when we have reported heavy metals results in the past, we have always, in every case, talked about the quantitation.
[00:04:32]  In other words, the concentration of lead or mercury or arsenic or cadmium that's found in food because it's the concentration that determines the safety versus toxicity.
[00:04:44]  Concentration is everything.
[00:04:47]  And very high arsenic, yeah, can be dangerous to your health, especially depending on the form of arsenic, such as organic versus inorganic.
[00:04:58]  However, a couple of atoms of arsenic, or a few molecules that contain arsenic as one of their atomic compounds, is of no concern whatsoever.
[00:05:10]  Just like a few molecules of something containing lead, a very small number of molecules, parts per trillion concentrations of lead, or even low, low parts per billion, is not really a concern for food.
[00:05:25]  Now, if you're injecting it, that's different.
[00:05:27]  If you're injecting yourself with a vaccine that contains 50,000 parts per billion mercury, that's a problem.
[00:05:34]  And that's what flu shots do contain, by the way, but that's a different discussion.
[00:05:38]  That's vaccines.
[00:05:39]  That's something you're practically mainlining in your tissues.
[00:05:44]  We're talking about foods that contain trace amounts of arsenic or lead or cadmium or what have you.
[00:05:51]  And again, it's just...
[00:05:54]  You know, look, I'm a scientist.
[00:05:55]  I run an ISO-accredited laboratory.
[00:05:57]  There are very high demands on our accuracy and our honesty and scientific integrity in reporting what we report.
[00:06:05]  And when I saw this other group reporting that baby foods test positive for arsenic, I immediately thought, you know, that's...
[00:06:15]  I'm not gonna...
[00:06:17]  That's BS. That's total BS. That's not a scientific statement.
[00:06:22]  And, of course, the media bought it hook, line, and sinker because most journalists are, of course, scientifically illiterate.
[00:06:28]  They don't know the difference.
[00:06:30]  So they report, oh, this baby food is all testing positive for arsenic.
[00:06:33]  Yeah, but how much arsenic?
[00:06:36]  There's arsenic in everything.
[00:06:38]  A little bit.
[00:06:39]  You know, at least a few atoms.
[00:06:40]  I can find arsenic in almost anything with a sensitive enough instrument.
[00:06:47]  Even your breath.
[00:06:49]  What you exhale, I guarantee you there are arsenic atoms in your exhalation.
[00:06:56]  No question about it.
[00:06:58]  Every breath you take, as the police used to sing, has arsenic in it.
[00:07:04]  So does that mean you test positive for arsenic?
[00:07:07]  Should you ban yourself because you test positive for it?
[00:07:10]  No, it doesn't mean anything.
[00:07:13]  Now, if you're going to eat something that is, you know, five parts per million arsenic, that could be a concern.
[00:07:21]  But five parts per trillion is one billion times less.
[00:07:27]  And so that's not a concern.
[00:07:29]  So we have to be aware of these concentration differences.
[00:07:33]  And I've always made it a point to report this And I made a mistake on reporting some findings for bone broth, which I quickly corrected because I reported that we had found some amounts of antibiotics and pesticides and so on, and then I saw the public overreacted to it.
[00:07:52]  And very quickly, within a few days, I corrected that and put out a chart that said, no, these are trace levels because I don't want to give the wrong impression about foods or supplements or anything.
[00:08:03]  I don't want people to mistakenly think that there are massive amounts of these things when it's really only a very trace amount that was actually detected.
[00:08:11]  And I just hope that other labs would be as honest.
[00:08:15]  You know, they can get a lot of press by raising a false flag alarm, basically.
[00:08:20]  They could take any food off the shelf and say, oh, it tested positive for lead.

=== Basic Elements Explained (02:25) ===

[00:08:25]  But that doesn't mean anything, because lead is an element, not a chemical compound.
[00:08:32]  There is a huge difference.
[00:08:34]  And I guess it's because most of the public doesn't have a very good science education.
[00:08:39]  So most people are not, you know, well-informed about the differences between an atom or an element versus a molecule or a chemical compound, let's say.
[00:08:52]  So people don't know.
[00:08:55]  What does testing positive for something mean?
[00:08:59]  And maybe I should just do like a science lesson or something.
[00:09:02]  I don't know.
[00:09:02]  Maybe I should just do like sort of science 101.
[00:09:07]  The physical stuff in your world is made out of this other stuff.
[00:09:12]  Like everything that you know that's physical is made out of these elements.
[00:09:18]  And mostly it's just, you know, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen.
[00:09:24]  You know, just, it's not even usually that many elements.
[00:09:27]  It's just all the same basic elements.
[00:09:30]  It's like a handful of elements make up everything that you know.
[00:09:34]  You know, from the clothes you wear, to your teeth, to your brain matter, the lipids coursing through your body, your blood, all these things.
[00:09:46]  It's all made of the same basic stuff, about 20 elements.
[00:09:49]  It's mostly about it.
[00:09:52]  And yet, people, I don't know, people are confused about this subject, so I don't know.
[00:10:00]  You know, I try to be accurate, I try to educate people about real science, and I try to report findings in food that are legitimately alarming.
[00:10:08]  You know, when I see high mercury in some, you know, rice protein product, you know, I sound the alarm because mercury is very toxic at very low levels.
[00:10:19]  But arsenic, to have like one atom of arsenic in some baby food, that's nothing.
[00:10:27]  Or even to have parts per trillion in baby food, that's nothing.
[00:10:31]  So, I don't know.
[00:10:33]  I'll try to put out the most accurate information I can, but the public doesn't seem to have a good grasp on this yet.
[00:10:42]  Maybe I'll keep educating people and see how this goes.
[00:10:45]  Thanks for listening.
[00:10:46]  This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, for naturalnews.com.