"Choose your poison, gluten or arsenic?"


It might be worth pointing out that human bodies have always been exposed to various toxins.  Exposure is an inevitable consequence of interaction with our environments, and always has been.


Many of us still have mercury amalgams in our teeth.  We're alive, although research shows our health is somewhat compromised.  Yet Karen Wetterhahn, the Dartmouth chemist, died after exposure (through her gloves, mind you) to a couple drops of dimethylmercury.  That form of mercury is highly toxic.  Sodium chloride is table salt and we eat it, yet chlorine gas or sodium metal will kill you pretty quickly.  And so on.


We are discovering that we don't know enough about the consequences of putting chemicals into our environment, such as how they interact with other chemicals already there, or what their true degradation rate is depending on the local soils and so on.


And we should think about all sources of exposure.  If you are exposed to gluten in 100 different ways, but arsenic at trace levels in only one way, maybe you should worry more about the gluten.


Also ponder the fact that threshold of tolerance levels differ among animals (and plants).  It's a complex world.


Christina

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