Up in Smoke
In the last months of her life, my mother-in-law simply denied that she started smoking cigarettes when she was 15 years old. And that – some 65 years later – she still was. She hid the carton in her...
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Playing Chicken with Arsenic
If I were to pick an element that just about everyone recognizes as a poison, it would be arsenic (As). As a crumbly compound called “white” arsenic or arsensic trioxide (AsO3) it became so popular as...
View ArticleDr. Oz and the Arsenic Thing
Let me get this out of the way first: I don’t watch Dr. Mehmet Oz on television. I did see a show the year before last while I was keeping an older relative company. I can’t tell you what it was about,...
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A Colorful Little Tale of Halloween Poison
I grew up on a dead-end street in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where remnants of swampy forest surrounded the old wood-frame homes. Live oaks lined the streets. Spanish moss dripped from their branches....
View ArticleDr. Oz and the Arsenic Thing (A Sequel)
Back in September, I wrote an, um, slightly cranky post about Dr. Mehmet Oz’s self-proclaimed expose of arsenic levels in commercially produced apple juice in the United States. It was but one of many...
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On rice and arsenic
Source: Wikimedia Commons Last week, a team of researchers from Dartmouth University released a widely publicized study with the somewhat provocative title “Arsenic, Organic Foods and Brown Rice...
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