High Fructose Corn Syrup contains mercury, scare tactic or fact?

To cut to the chase, it’s both.  It’s fact and an alarmist view point of the sky is falling.

From my contacts on twitter, I was made aware of this article posted on the Washington Post’s Website. (here’s the article)   In it detailed how traces of mercury were found in High Fructose Corn Syrup.  I just shook my head as I read what I thought was another reason to avoid the stuff. I already do try to steer clear of it.  There are many good reasons to avoid HFCS with  mercury question aside. Diabetes, early childhood obesity, etc, etc. I’m not advocating there aren’t good issues for avoiding High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Mercury content however is not one of them.

When I read that the mercury from this study could be coming from caustic soda that is used in the production process, it gave me pause enough to realize that I’d be looking into this with a bit more detail. Why?

Caustic soda or Sodium Hydroxide is an ingredient that is the alkaline portion of the chemical process that makes soap.  Yep, I’m a soap maker and Sodium Hydroxide is an alkali ingredient required for the chemical process of saponification.

My first question: How is High Fructose Corn Syrup made? and does that process always or sometimes include Sodium Hydroxide? I conclude yes with the following sources.

Here’s what hfcsfacts.com says: “use of enzymes to invert glucose to fructose;”

Here’s what wikipedia says for definition of corn syrup:

“A series of two enzymatic reactions are used to convert the corn starch to corn syrup” and ” The viscosity and sweetness of the syrup depends on the extent to which the hydrolysis reaction has been carried out. ”

“A study published in the journal Environmental Health in 2009 [3] [4] found that high-fructose corn syrup was commonly tainted with mercury, and found traces of mercury in many common retail products that contained high-fructose corn syrup as an ingredient. The mercury appears to come from caustic soda and hydrochloric acid, two chemicals used in the manufacture of high-fructose corn syrup that can, depending on their manufacturing process, contain traces of mercury.The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy tested 55 consumer items, finding mercury in one third of the samples ranging from 30 to 350 parts per trillion. The amounts of mercury found was far less than that commonly seen in most fish and seafood. The researchers cautioned that their study was limited. ^{[43]” – Wikipedia}

Second Question: If mercury is coming from the caustic soda, what does this mean to me as a soap maker?

With all of these facts swirling, I decided what better way to find out more information than to contact my own supplier for Sodium Hydroxide or caustic soda. 

Here is what Howard Apel of AAA Chemicals  who has been in the industry for over 20 years had to say:

The highest level of mercury they found, and I’m sure they looked really, really hard – was several foods with 300 ppt (parts per trillion).  One part per trillion:. This is equivalent to 1 drop of water diluted into 20, two-meter-deep Olympic-size swimming pools (50,000 m³), or one second of time in approximately 31,700 years.

Now, lets look at the EPA requirement for SAFE drinking water: 2,000 ppt.  So safe drinking water (which I assume people consume way more of than Chocolate Syrup or BBQ sauce (well most people anyway) has 2,000 parts per trillion.  Rainwater has 20 ppt in many areas of the country.

Now what about the caustic soda (sodium hydroxide)?  Well, the food grade that we sell is made from PPG domestically, and is approved for both food use and water treatment (yes, drinking water pH adjustment).  The spec is 0.1 ppm (that is 100 ppb or 100,000 ppt), so theoretically you could end up with about 8,000 ppt in soap (if I did my math right).  So you are about 4 times the limit for drinking water, but of course you are not CONSUMING it.