BioMed Central Page 1 of 6 (page number not for citation purposes) Environmental Health Open Access Commentary Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product sugar Renee Dufault* 1 , Blaise LeBlanc 2 , Roseanne Schnoll 3 , Charles Cornett 4 , Laura Schweitzer 4 , David Wallinga 5 , Jane Hightower 6 , Lyn Patrick 7 and Walter J Lukiw 8 Address: 1 United Tribes Technical College, Bismarck, ND, USA, 2 Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, Tucson, AZ, USA, 3 Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences, Brooklyn College of CUNY, Brooklyn, NY, USA, 4 Department of Chemistry and Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin- Platteville, Platteville, WI, USA, 5 Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Minneapolis, MN, USA, 6 Department of Internal Medicine, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA, 7 Contributing Editor, Alternative Medicine Review, Durango, CO, USA and 8 Professor of Neuroscience and Ophthalmology, LSU Neuroscience Center. Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, LA, USA Email: Renee Dufault* - rdufault@uttc.edu; Blaise LeBlanc - blaise_ll@hotmail.com; Roseanne Schnoll - rschnoll@brooklyn.cuny.edu; Charles Cornett - cornettc@uwplatt.edu; Laura Schweitzer - schweitl@uwplatt.edu; David Wallinga - lpatrick@frontier.net; Jane Hightower - jhightowermd@aol.com; Lyn Patrick - dwallinga@iatp.org; Walter J Lukiw - wlukiw@lsuhsc.edu * Corresponding author Abstract Mercury cell chlor-alkali products are used to produce thousands of other products including food ingredients such as citric acid, sodium benzoate, and high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup is used in food products to enhance shelf life. A pilot study was conducted to determine if high fructose corn syrup contains mercury, a toxic metal historically used as an anti-microbial. High fructose corn syrup samples were collected from three different manufacturers and analyzed for total mercury. The samples were found to contain levels of mercury ranging from below a detection limit of 0.005 to 0.570 micrograms mercury per gram of high fructose corn syrup. Average daily consumption of high fructose corn syrup is about 50 grams per person in the United States. With respect to total mercury exposure, it may be necessary to account for this source of mercury in the diet of children and sensitive populations. Background Chlorine and caustic soda are produced at chlor-alkali plants using mercury cells or the increasingly popular membrane technology that is mercury free and more energy-efficient. Worldwide there are approximately fifty mercury cell chlor-alkali plants in operation [1]. Of those there are eight in the United States (US) [2]. In 2003 the EPA reported in the Federal Register that on average approximately seven tons of mercury were missing from each plant in the year 2000 [3]. These chlor-alkali plants have an average of fifty-six cells, each containing as much as 8,000 pounds of mercury [4] and, every year the chlor- alkali industry reports unaccounted for mercury losses to the EPA [5]. Mercury is a danger to unborn children whose developing brains can be damaged if they are exposed to low dose microgram exposures in the womb [6]. Since mercury is a potent neurological toxin, these unaccounted for mercury losses from the chlor-alkali industry are of concern as they could be a source of exposure for humans, wildlife, and the environment. An Environmental Health Published: 26 January 2009 Environmental Health 2009, 8:2 doi:10.1186/1476-069X-8-2 Received: 9 September 2008 Accepted: 26 January 2009 This article is available from: http://www.ehjournal.net/content/8/1/2 © 2009 Dufault et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.