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First it was rice.  Now it's red wine. Arsenic , anyone? According to a new study, arsenic is found in many red wines, even some in the metro New York region.   A new University of Washington study that tested 65 wines from America's top four wine-producing states — California, Washington, New York and Oregon — found all but one have arsenic levels that exceed what's allowed in drinking water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows drinking water to contain no more than 10 parts per billion of arsenic. The wine samples ranged from 10 to 76 parts per billion, with an average of 24 parts per billion. But a companion study concluded that the likely health risks from that naturally-occurring toxic element depend on how many other foods and beverages known to be high in arsenic, such as apple juice, rice, or cereal bars, an individual person eats. Want to be really scared?  The highest risks from arsenic exposure stem from certain types of infant fo...

How scary is this?  Mice exposed to low levels of arsenic -- the amounts some of us may have in our ground water -- developed lung cancer. According to newswise.com, mice exposed to low doses of arsenic in drinking water, similar to what some people might consume, developed this cancer, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found.  Arsenic levels in public drinking water cannot exceed 10 parts per billion (ppb), which is the standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. However, there are no established standards for private wells, from which millions of people get their drinking water. People in the northern suburbs of my town have discovered, to their horror, that their well water contains many things it shouldn't.  Including arsenic. The researchers used a model that duplicates how humans are exposed to arsenic throughout their entire lifetime. In the study, the mice were given arsenic three weeks before breeding and throughou...

I love chicken.  My favorite meal is a plate of dark meat chicken thighs, mayonnaise (an odd but old family tradition), rice and peas.  But a story in The New York Times this morning got me thinking I may need to switch to pralines and cream (my other favorite) instead. According to Sabrina Tavernise, researchers have found that chicken contains levels of arsenic that, while not toxic in the small amounts they appear in, over time could lead to cancer.  Last year high levels of arsenic were also found in rice. Bummer.  Big time.  Roxarsone, and a chemically similar drug, nitarsone, remain the last federally approved uses of arsenic in food production, Keeve Nachman, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and the chicken study’s main author, told Tavernise. "Roxarsone, known by its brand name 3-Nitro, kills intestinal parasites, promotes growth and makes meat look pinker,' Tavernise reports. "It contains organic arsenic, which is...