New studies paint an increasingly alarming picture – particularly for young children – about how these chemicals are being spread across big swaths of American cities and suburbs by what may seem an unlikely source – a type of asphalt sealer. These sealants are derived from an industrial waste, coal tar.

Four new studies (links are at the end of this article) announced this week further implicate coal tar-based asphalt sealants as likely health risks.  The creosote-like material typically is sprayed onto parking lots and driveways in an effort to preserve the asphalt. It also gives the pavement a dark black coloring that many people find attractive.

Coal tar is a byproduct of the steelmaking industry. In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared that it would not be classified as a hazardous waste, even though it met the characteristics of one, because it could be recycled for uses that include coating asphalt. That meant steel mills didn’t have to pay for costly landfilling or incineration of the waste.

Only in recent years have scientists discovered the ill effects of this practice.

Coal tar sealants are used most heavily in the eastern United States, but were applied in all 50 states until Washington state banned the products last year. More than a dozen local governments, including Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas, also have banned the coal tar sealants in favor of the other major type of sealant, which is asphalt-based.

Asphalt-based sealants contain about 1/1000th the concentration of the cancer-causing chemicals that coal tar-based products do. Home Depot and Lowe’s stores have dropped the coal tar sealants from their product lines, but still some 85 million gallons of the coal tar-based sealants are applied annually in the United States.

The new research, published in peer-reviewed science journals, focuses on a class of chemicals found in coal tar and known as “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” or PAHs. Previously, researchers believed that people’s exposure to PAHs came primarily through food, which contains trace amounts produced primarily from smoking food or cooking it at high temperatures in practices such as grilling, roasting, and frying. PAHS are produced when any organic matter burns.

The new research shows:

• It appears that children – especially those from 3 to 5 years old – living by coal tar-sealed parking lots and driveways are getting a bigger dose of PAHs from house dust than from their food. The kids who put their hands in their mouth most often are likely receiving 9 ½ times more exposure through house dust than through food, according to research led by E. Spencer Williams, a Baylor University human health risk assessment expert. That’s just from the house dust. When the kids are outside in the yard or playing on coal tar-sealed pavement, they likely are picking up much larger doses.
• While researchers previously theorized that airborne PAHs come mostly from power plants, factories and cars’ and trucks’ tailpipe emissions, U.S. Geological Survey researchers measured large amounts vaporizing into the air off coal tar-sealed parking lots.  The concentrations coming off parking lots in suburban Austin, where the researchers are based, were higher than in centers of heavy industry, including Jersey City and Camden, N.J.; Chicago; London and Manchester, England; and Guangzhou, China. The Austin parking lots tested were three to eight years old. Much more off-gassing occurs in the first few years after the sealants are applied, researchers said.
• Concentrations measured four feet above the coal tar-sealed lots in some cases exceeded health-protection guidelines recommended by a European Union science panel to protect against cancer. The United States has no similar guidelines.
• Extrapolating from the 85 million gallons of coal tar sealants laid down annually and the out-gassing rates measured in Austin, Geological Survey researchers calculated that nationwide, more PAHs are getting into the air from coal tar-sealed parking lots, driveways and playgrounds than from all the auto and truck exhaust.

“That’s a lot,” said Barbara Mahler, a USGS scientist involved in the research.

Researchers previously had shown that coal tar-sealed parking lots were shedding tiny bits of the material, which was washed by rain into nearby waterways – killing, sickening and maiming aquatic creatures such as salamanders, minnows and, importantly, bugs at the base of the food chain. The chemicals kill tadpoles, cause tumors on fish, stunt growth of aquatic creatures and reduce the number of species able to live in a waterway.

As a result of being washed into waterways by stormwater, these chemicals’ concentrations have been rising over the last two decades, even as levels of most contaminants are headed down, Geological Survey researchers showed.

The chemicals are getting into the house dust, researchers think, when small bits are eroded off pavement and tracked into nearby homes.

Scientists also had previously demonstrated that toxic constituents of coal tar were showing up in the dust of homes adjacent to parking lots and driveways, raising questions about health effects on children in those homes, especially toddlers who frequently put their hands in their mouths. Coal tar is known to cause cancer in humans, as well as genetic mutations in lab animals.

One of the new studies helps quantify that risk. Kids who are average in terms of how often they put their hands into their mouths are getting 2 ½ times as many PAHs from house dust as from food, while those in the 95th percentile of hand-to-mouth behavior – they do it more than 94 percent of other kids – get 9 ½ times as much from the dust.

Researchers still would like to know how much of a toxic dose those same kids are getting when they play outside in yards next to coal tar-sealed asphalt, or on the asphalt itself. The level of cancer-causing chemicals in the dust on the asphalt itself has been measured at about 37 times the levels found in house dust.

“Those concentrations are a good bit higher and this study doesn’t include that at all,” said Williams, the Baylor researcher. “That may be important because just one little fingerful could be a relevant dose,” meaning one that worries health experts.

While researchers have known about contamination of water and dust, the findings about air pollution are new. Significant amounts of PAHs continue to vaporize off coal tar-sealed lots even years after the sealant is put down.

“When we look at a seal-coated parking lots, in any direction we look we see these really strongly elevated concentrations,” said Peter Van Metre, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist based in Austin. Of the dust on the coal tar-sealed pavement, he said: “It would just take a tiny amount of that to be a large enough dose for it to be significant.”

Companies that sell and use the coal tar sealants have previously disputed the growing body of evidence of the coal tar sealants’ danger being amassed by scientists from the Geological Survey, the University of New Hampshire, Baylor and other institutions.

Repeated attempts this week to reach an industry representative, Anne LeHuray, executive director of the Pavement Coatings Technology Council, for comment on the new studies were unsuccessful. In an email on Thursday, LeHuray said she was tied up at a meeting of the pavement council in Memphis.

Generally, the pavement council has attacked previous coal tar research on technical grounds.

Read previous articles on coal tar sealants:

• Study sees parking lot dust as a cancer risk
• State bans coal tar sealants in big win for foes

The pavement council has fought bans – sometimes successfully – when they have been proposed by local and state governments. In addition to the local governments that have forbidden use of the coal tar sealants, some governments have placed restrictions on their use, including the state of Minnesota and the California Department of Transportation. Restrictions also are in effect in more than 40 Illinois municipalities.

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democratic congressman from the Austin area, has previously filed legislation calling for a nationwide ban on coal tar sealants. He plans to refile the legislation, a Doggett spokeswoman said, but is currently embroiled in a redistricting fight.

Tom Ennis, an Austin city official who helped get coal tar sealants banned there, has now launched a campaign to support a nationwide ban.

“You’re looking at a big urban air quality” problem, Ennis said. “It’s completely unacceptable and something needs to be done.”

The studies announced this week appeared in the science journals Environmental Science and Technology, Chemosphere, Atmospheric Environment,  and  Environmental Pollution.

Tartrazine, also known as E102 or Yellow #5, was one of the colorings linked to childhood hyperactivity in a landmark 2007 study conducted by the United Kingdom’sFood Standards Agency. As a consequence, products containing it must carry a warning label anywhere in the European Union.

Not surprisingly, the United States has no such law — even though the coloring has been linked to asthma, migraines and cancer. But since when the FDA ever bother warning the public about dangerous chemicals in their food anyway? After all, aspartame, MSG and sodium nitrite are all legal — so why not add a little food coloring poison to the cocktail and call it “nutrition?”

Related links:

• http://www.naturalnews.com/029886_industrial_waste_pickle.html
• http://www.naturalnews.com/030293_artificial_colors_hyperactivity.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartrazine
• http://www.additivesinfood.info/codes/102/

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/034999_tartrazine_food_coloring_hyperactivity.html#ixzz1mwbPqtnk

Environmental chemist Brian P. Jackson led the team of researchers in their study of arsenic levels in 17 infant formulas. Their results are surprising: formulas made with brown rice syrup contained a staggering 20 to 30 times more arsenic than other formulas. One organic infant formula sweetened with brown rice syrup contained six times the amount of arsenic the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers safe for drinking water.

The research team also looked at arsenic levels in 29 cereal bars. Brown rice syrup and other rice products were listed in the top five ingredients of 22 of these bars – and those were the cereal bars that contained the highest arsenic levels. While arsenic is regulated in drinking water, there are no current federal limits for arsenic in food. Because of this, high levels of arsenic can be present in foods many parents assume are safe for children, such as organic infant formulas and cereal bars. Researchers say, “There is an urgent need for regulatory limits on arsenic in food.”

Jackson adds, “In the absence of regulations for levels of arsenic in food, I would certainly advise parents who are concerned about their children’s exposure to arsenic not to feed them formula where brown rice syrup is the main ingredient.”

The trouble with brown rice syrup? Banned pesticides left high levels of arsenic in the soil. Many people consider brown rice syrup a healthy alternative to cane sugar, but brown rice syrup comes with a serious disadvantage: high levels of arsenic.

The problem is that rice used to make brown rice syrup is typically grown in regions where arsenic pesticides were heavily used before the EPA banned them in 2009. And while these pesticides are no longer used, their toxic residue is still lurking in the soil where our food is grown.

Rice appears to soak up unusually large amounts of arsenic from the soil as it grows. Much of this arsenic ends up in the brown hull, so brown rice and brown rice syrup will contain particularly high amounts of arsenic compared to products like white rice and rice starch.

Unfortunately, buying organic doesn’t solve the problem. Organic rice syrup has been found to contain very high levels of arsenic, because even organic rice absorbs arsenic already present in the soil.

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/035010_arsenic_baby_formula_brown_rice_syrup.html#ixzz1mvrskXUY

This study was designed to evaluate the ability of activated clinoptilolite suspended in water (ACS) to remove heavy metals from the body through urinary excretion. Initial heavy metal levels were established using hair, saliva and urine. The protocol utilized two treatment groups, each consisting of otherwise healthy men with chronic, employment-related exposure to heavy metals. Forty volunteers (Group 1) were given a 90 day supply of ACS, while 10 volunteers (Group 2) were given a 90-day supply of the placebo.

Results: Changes in urinary concentration of the heavy metals were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and compared to the baseline. Participants in both groups had increased concentrations of heavy metals in the urine with the peak excretion at around day 4. For those on the ACS, the excretion levels went up 9 fold over baseline within a week and stayed that way for the entire time of the study. For the placebo subjects, there was no change from baseline excretion.

Conclusion: This study demonstrates that the daily use of an activated clinoptilolite suspension (ACS) represents a potentially safe and effective way to remove toxic heavy metals from the body through increased urinary excretion.

Click here to view study.

“There are between fifteen and twenty chemicals that have been shown to cause weight gain,” says an obesity researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. And many of these chemicals, the average person already has in their blood. Research has also found that these chemicals affect developing fetuses, which means that if the mother has them in her blood or has them in high levels, her child will more likely become obese. Thus these chemicals create generational problems that may also have affected people who are already alive today.

Of course, obesity isn’t just a health problem. It’s also often a social problem for those who experience it, so in several ways, it’s known to diminish the quality of life. Problems such as childhood teasing and exclusion from society are often cited as stemming from the source.

The chemicals responsible often use different mechanisms which ultimately lead to easy gain and hard to get rid of weight. Some of the chemicals increase the number of fat cells you have, so you have more cells to store fat in. Others increase the size of your fat cells and make them larger so they can store more fat per cell. Still other chemicals alter our hormones which then affect our appetites, whether we feel full or not, our food preferences, and even our energy metabolism. Of course, by lowering your energy metabolism, you might feel it’s impossible to lose weight no matter what you do.

It’s also interesting that the chemicals can affect your food preferences, which means they affect which foods sound good to eat. And it’s hard to imagine these weight gain chemicals would cause you to crave the healthy stuff.

Where Are They Found?

These “weight gain” chemicals are often found in: pesticides, pharmaceuticals and common plastics. Most of them are endocrine disruptors and they’ve also been found in products including handbags, wallpaper, blinds, tile, air fresheners, laundry products, and numerous personal care products. To some extent, they are all around us.

Bisphenol A, or BPA, is another one, and it’s often in canned foods, baby bottles, and medical devices. Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri biology professor, tells us that, “BPA reduces the number of fat cells but programs them to incorporate more fat, so there are fewer but very large fat cells.” Vom Saal has studied BPA for the past 15 years.

When you realize how various and pervasive chemicals in your body may be related to your difficulties in losing weight, you may also come to the conclusion that detoxification is the answer. Because when you remove those chemicals, you can also diminish or eliminate the affects they are having on your body. At the very least, they will no longer continue to be there, causing the problem.

Related Articles

• http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesogen
• http://healthpsych.psy.vanderbilt.edu/2009/Obesogens.htm

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/034981_weight_loss_chemicals_BPA.html#ixzz1mY2lZOid

A modified version of aspartame with even more added toxicity, neotame received quiet and unassuming FDA approval back in 2002, even though no safety studies have ever been conducted on the chemical (http://www.neotame.com/pdf/neotame_fda_US.pdf). In fact, an investigation conducted by Feingold.org found only four studies relating to neotame in the MEDLINE database.

Two of these “studies” were not studies at all, and the other two were actually one duplicate study conducted by NutraSweet, the company that produces and sells neotame.

So just like with aspartame, the FDA has once again approved for use a dangerous sweetener chemical that metabolizes into formaldehyde when consumed. Except this time, the chemical contains added 3-dimethylbutyl, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has listed as one of the most hazardous known chemicals, and it does not have to be labeled on any of the products to which it is added.

“Neotame has similar structure to aspartame — except that, from it’s structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame,” writes HolisticMed.com on its page about neotame. “Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid” (http://www.holisticmed.com/neotame/toxin.html).

The FDA, the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), and the World Health Organization (WHO) all consider neotame to be safe for use, despite the fact that WHO actually published a paper seeking to establish acceptable daily intake levels for neotame. If neotame is so safe that it does not even have to be labeled, according to the FDA, then why do acceptable daily intake levels have to be established? And what is the point of establishing them in the first place?

This dog and pony show of special interest regulatory corruption is a travesty that will have global negative health consequences. Like most other toxins added to foods, neotame will most likely cause chronic damage over a long period of time, which means mainstream health authorities will get away with never having to admit that neotame is a dangerous toxin.

Children exposed to two or more anesthetics before age 3 had more than double the incidence of ADHD than children who had no exposure, says David Warner, M.D., a Mayo Clinic pediatric anesthesiologist and investigator on the observational study.

The findings are published in the Feb. 2 edition of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

When basic science studies in the medical literature began to suggest anesthesia used in surgery causes changes in the brains of young animals, Dr. Warner and a group of researchers at Mayo Clinic took note.

“Those studies piqued our interest,” Dr. Warner says. “We were skeptical that the findings in animals would correlate with kids, but it appears that it does.”

The study utilized results of an existing epidemiological study that looked at educational records of children born between 1976 and 1982 in Rochester, Minn., and determined those who developed some form of learning disability or ADHD.

Among 341 cases of ADHD in those younger than 19, researchers traced medical records in the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a decades-long database of all patient care in Olmsted County, Minn., looking for exposure to anesthesia and surgery before age 3.

Children who had no exposure to anesthesia and surgery had ADHD at a rate of 7.3 percent. The rate after a single exposure to anesthesia and surgery was approximately the same. For children who had two or more exposures to anesthesia and surgery, the rate of ADHD was 17.9 percent, even after researchers adjusted for other factors, including gestational age, sex, birth weight and comorbid health conditions.

The results of the study, however, do not definitively mean that anesthesia causes ADHD, Dr. Warner says.

“This is an observational study,” he says. “A wide range of other factors might be responsible for the higher frequency of ADHD in children with multiple exposures. The findings certainly do suggest that further investigation into this area is warranted, and investigators at Mayo Clinic and elsewhere are actively pursuing these studies.”

The study was funded by the United States Food and Drug Administration, the Mayo Clinic Center for Translational Sciences Activities, the National Institutes of Health and the Rochester Epidemiology Project.

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2012-rst/6678.html?rss-feedid=1

Mayo Clinic findings (re anesthesia and brain damage)

Research shows that just 4ppm of aluminum can cause the blood to coagulate. This is what causes Alzheimer’s Disease and has been documented to inhibit learning. Aluminum consumption can also be associated with the development of bone disorders, including stress fractures.

Also known as tartrazine, FD&C Yellow Aluminum Lake is a chemical concoction derived from coal tar. It is known to be are productive toxin. All artificial colors contain Aluminum Lake, so when your child gets to pick between red, blue or green medicine, they’re really choosing which poison they get to consume. Several chemically enhanced food colorings contain ammonia and therefore produce compounds proven to cause various cancers in animal studies, according to CSPI, the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Most widely used food colors and their damaging actions:

• Blue #1: Research shows it causes kidney tumors in mice.
• Blue #2: Research shows even higher incidence of tumors, specifically gliomas in male rates (a type of tumor that starts in the brain or spine).
• Red #2: Toxic to rodents, even at modest levels, and causes tumors of the bladder.
• Red #3: FDA recognized it in 1990 as a cause of thyroid cancer in animals. It was banned in cosmetics, but still allowed in food and medicine.
• Red #40:Most popular dye of all. Debilitates the immune-system in mice. Allergic reactions common.
• Green #3: Causes bladder and testes tumors.
• Yellow #5: Affects behavior and induces severe hypersensitivity reactions.
• Yellow #6: Causes adrenal tumors in animals.

The following is taken directly from FDA’s Regulatory Process and Historical Perspectives: “Color additives are important components of many products, making them attractive, appealing, appetizing, and informative. Added color serves as a kind of code that allows us to identify products on sight, like candy flavors and medicine dosages.” Really?! Decoding medicine dosages on sight?

There has been a 55% increase in U.S. toxic food dyes just since the year 2000. There are over15 million pounds of dyes put in foods, drinks, candy and medicine every year, and the FDA does nothing to protect consumers from the colorful barrage of poison. 

Studies reveal that children have consumed as much as three pounds of dye by the age of twelve

Here are some popular product and “brand” names you may mistake as exempt products: RD&C dyes and colors in baked goods, beverages, candy, cereal, drugs, pet food, personal care products, cosmetics, cough syrups, NyQuil,Tylenol, Robitussin,Jello, gelatins, Cheetos, Skittles, Fruity Pebbles, Marachino cherries, sausage, Mountain Dew, Doritos, chewing gum, and powdered drink mixes.

American companies doing business in Europe currently have to change their products to natural colorings to meet European Union strict regulations. The FDA’s rationale is that because artificial food colorings are used mainly in foods and medicines of low or no nutritional value, that the American public should “already be aware” of health implications, so it doesn’t matter if other toxins are added.

Related articles:

http://chemicaloftheday.squarespace.com/todays-chemical/2009/7/7/fdc-yellow-5-aluminum-lake.html

http://www.amoils.com/health-blog/the-8-most-common-artificial-food-dyes-and-what-they-can-do-to-your-health-3/

http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/ColorAdditives/RegulatoryProcessHistoricalPerspectives/default.htm

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/165315-overview

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/food/artificial-food-colors.htm

http://www.feingold.org/Research/dyesinfood.html

http://www.intlfoodcraft.com/color_guide.html

(http://www.amoils.com/health-blog/the-8-most-common-artificial-food-dyes-and-what-they-can-do-to-your-health-3/)

http://healingautismandadhd.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/artificial-food-coloring-is-evil/

http://jennifercopley.suite101.com/health-concerns-regarding-artificial-colours-a197580

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/034813_childrens_medicines_aluminum_pills.html

Take the Mayo Clinic’s official web site, for example, which claims: “depression is such a horrible disease that depression treatment during pregnancy is essential. If you have untreated depression, you might not have the energy to take good care of yourself. You might not seek optimal prenatal care or eat the healthy foods your baby needs to thrive. You might turn to smoking or drinking alcohol.”

Notice all the “mights” in that plug for antidepressant use during pregnancy. The web site states the risk of pregnant women taking SSRIs causing drug-related harm to their babies is “low.” What’s shocking is that this information is currently up on the Mayo website when evidence has accumulated over the past year that antidepressants can, in fact, cause very serious and potentially deadly birth defects.

For example, a Finnish study published last July provided evidence that exposure to SSRIs in the first trimester of pregnancy increases the risk for major congenital anomalies, particularly heart problems. In fact, the use of fluoxetine (the generic name for Prozac) in the first three months of a pregnancy was linked to a two-fold risk for isolated ventricular sepal defects; another SSRI, paroxetine (Paxil), was associated with more than a four-fold increased risk for right ventricular outflow tract defects in newborn hearts.

If that’s not shocking and worrisome enough, especially when you consider the CDC reports at least one in ten Americans are now taking SSRIs, including countless numbers of pregnant women. News about birth defects linked to these antidepressants just got worse. A new study just published online by the British Medical Journal reveals that women who take SSRIs during pregnancy are more likely to give birth to children with a very dangerous and serious condition — persistent pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure in the lungs).

SSRIs can be a serious threat to the health of babies

Persistent pulmonary hypertension is caused by an increase in blood pressure in the lungs. That, in turn, leads to shortness of breath and other breathing difficulties. This is no minor problem, either, but a severe disease with strong links to heart failure.

The new study, conducted by scientists at the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, investigated 1.6 million births between 1996 and 2007 in five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. In all, a total of 1,618,255 single births were included in the study. The researchers discovered that 11,000 of the mothers had filled prescriptions for anti-depressants in late pregnancy and approximately 17,000 more had taken the drugs in early pregnancy. An additional 54,184 mothers in the study were found to have previously been given a psychiatric diagnosis but these women did not take any antidepressant medication during their pregnancies.

Babies born to the women in the study were assessed after 231 days (33 weeks). The results? Taking SSRIs appeared to clearly raise the risk of pulmonary persistent hypertension. In all, the new study found three babies with pulmonary persistent hypertension per 1000 women taking SSRIs in early pregnancy. That number doubled if the anti-depressants were taken in late pregnancy.

The risk was not enormous. But pulmonary persistent hypertension in a baby is a very serious disease and any increase in cases at all is extremely worrisome, especially when it could be prevented. After all, taking SSRIs is not something a woman absolutely has to do. Exercise, sound nutrition, stress relief, yoga and a host of other natural approaches have been documented to help relieve depression.

In an accompanying editorial, researchers from the Motherisk Program Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and the School of Pharmacy at the University of Oslo concluded that mothers who take SSRIs in late pregnancy are more likely to give birth to children with persistent pulmonary hypertension.

In a media release about the new study, Christina Chambers, PhD, MPH, from the University of California, San Diego, who has also studied potential risks of SSRI use in pregnancy, said the paper confirms results of “several other papers showing small increased risks for selected specific birth defects, although not all previous studies have shown a risk.”

Related links:

• http://www.bma.org.uk/
• http://www.naturalnews.com/SSRIs.html
• http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/2011/07000/Selective_Serotonin_Reuptake_Inhibitors_and_Risk.16.aspx
• http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/antidepressants/DN00007

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/034638_SSRI_drugs_antidepressants_high_blood_pressure.html#ixzz1jMB2th70

According to the Food and Drug Administration, a U.S. juice producer had detected low levels of carbendazim in orange juice concentrate imported from Brazil, the top grower accounting for more than 10 percent of the U.S. supply.

The pesticide is banned in U.S. citrus but it is used on orange trees in Brazil to fight mold. The FDA said low levels of carbendazim were not dangerous and the agency had no plans for a recall, but it would stop any shipments of orange juice at the border that tested positive for the fungicide.

Orange juice futures jumped almost 11 percent to an all-time high on the news, which was announced by the FDA in a letter to the Juice Products Association on Monday. The orange juice market is particularly prone to volatility because of its tiny size compared to oil and other major commodities.

It was not immediately clear whether there would be a related increase in orange juice prices for consumers, as that would depend on how long futures stay high and whether this results in a shortage of orange juice shipments into the United States.

Brands such as Tropicana, from PepsiCo Inc, and Minute Maid, from Coca-Cola Co, may use a mix of juices sourced from Brazil and the United States.

“Obviously food safety issues are probably going to play a bigger and bigger role in driving food or commodity prices in the future,” said Ray Royce, executive director of the Highlands County Citrus Growers Association in central Florida.

He said the spike in orange juice futures was a double-edged sword for Florida growers, even as higher prices generally translate into richer profits for them.

“There might be concerns in some consumers’ minds about there being chemicals within the juice. I think that could almost counter-balance the increase in futures prices and subsequent returns to Florida growers,” said Royce.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45956908/ns/health-food_safety/?ocid=twitter#.Tw3Pl6U29Bk