Arsenic in Apple Juice – Says Dr. Oz

Medical expert and TV host, Dr. Oz, said that arsenic is found in apple juice. He claimed on his Fox show Wednesday that a New Jersey lab found troubling levels of arsenic in many brands of juice.

The Food and Drug Administration, FDA, objected to Oz and said that its own tests show no such thing, even on one of the same juice batches Oz cited.

“There is no evidence of any public health risk from drinking these juices. And FDA has been testing them for years,” the agency said in a statement.

The flap escalated Thursday, when Oz’s former medical school classmate Dr. Richard Besser lambasted him on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show for what Besser called an “extremely irresponsible” report that was akin to “yelling ‘Fire!’ in a movie theater.”

Besser was acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before joining ABC news as health and medical editor several years ago.

Arsenic is naturally present in water, air, food and soil in two forms — organic and inorganic. According to the FDA, organic arsenic passes through the body quickly and is essentially harmless. Inorganic arsenic — the type found in pesticides — can be toxic and may pose a cancer risk if consumed at high levels or over a long period.

“The Dr. Oz Show” did not break down the type when it tested several dozen juice samples for total arsenic. As a result, the FDA said the results are misleading.

Dr.Oz is not conceding:

Tim Sullivan, a spokesman for Oz’s show, said in an interview: “We don’t think the show is irresponsible. We think the public has a right to know what’s in their foods.”

Sullivan said Oz does not agree that organic arsenic is as safe as authorities believe. The show will do further tests to distinguish organic from inorganic arsenic in juice samples, he said.

“The position of the show is that the total arsenic needs to be lower,” he said. “We did the tests. We stand by the results and we think the standards should be different.”

In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, even Oz said he wouldn’t hesitate to keep giving his four children apple juice.

“There’s no question in my mind folks can continue drinking apple juice. … There have been no cases at all of kids being harmed by elevated levels of arsenic, and the kinds of numbers we are talking about are not high enough to cause acute injury,” he said.

He said he was concerned instead about the possible ill effects from drinking apple juice for many years.