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FDA blasts Dr. Oz claim of arsenic in apple juice
Medpage Today
Mehmet Oz, MD, the Columbia University thoracic surgeon who gained fame first in books and more recently with his syndicated television show, has run afoul of the Food and Drug Administration with his report about levels of arsenic in popular brands of apple juice.
The FDA called the report “irresponsible and misleading” and another TV doc, ABC’s Richard Besser, MD, accused Oz of fear-mongering.
In a recent episode of The Dr. Oz Show, Oz reported that five brands of apple juice — Minute Maid, Apple & Eve, Mott’s, Juicy Juice, and Gerber — all contained some level of arsenic and suggested that this was a cause for concern.
The show used an independent laboratory, EMSL Analytical, to test dozens of samples from three U.S. cities to compare the level of arsenic in the juices to the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe standard for drinking water, less than 10 parts per billion.
Henry Miller, MD, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and formerly the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology, criticized Oz for failing to provide evidence that the levels of arsenic found in the apple juice were dangerous.
“Unless there is evidence that a substance is present at sufficient exposures and levels to cause harm, warnings about its presence in food (or in our bodies, for that matter) is irresponsible alarmism,” he wrote in an email. “This is the same sort of rubbish peddled by radical environmental activist organizations about pesticides.”
