Though TV’s Dr. Mehmet Oz stands by his findings that apple juice contains arsenic, in an interview this week with The Associated Press he says he will continue to give 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," says the Emmy-winning heart surgeon.
Oz is under fire from the Food and Drug Administration and others for saying on his Fox show that apple juice contains dangerous levels of arsenic.
Oz says testing by a New Jersey lab of five popular brands of apple juice shows that some contain dangerous levels of arsenic.
The FDA has had the same juices tested and says Dr. Oz’s claims are false.
"There is no evidence of any public health risk from drinking these juices. And FDA has been testing them for years," the agency says in a statement.
The FDA said that Dr. Oz did not distinguish harmful inorganic arsenic from the organic type.
According to the FDA, organic arsenic passes quickly through the body and is essentially harmless. Inorganic arsenic -- found in pesticides -- can be toxic and may pose a cancer risk if consumed at high levels or over a long period.
Furthermore, the agency's own tests found far lower total arsenic levels from one of the same juice batches the Oz show tested -- two to six parts per billion of arsenic versus the 36 that Oz claims.
Oz's former medical school classmate Dr. Richard Besser scolded him on ABC's "Good Morning America" saying that Dr. Oz’s report was like "yelling `Fire!' in a movie theater."
With AP
