Agent Blue – Arsenic-Laced Rainbow [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Agent Blue – Arsenic-Laced Rainbow [pdf]

11thrru.org

38 pointslimit499karma15 comments

> Until 2012, chickens in the U.S. were given compounds of arsenic to prevent certain diseases and to make the meat plump and pink

I was curious exactly what happened in 2012:

https://web.archive.org/web/20111229174314/https://www.fda.g... (2011)

> FDA announced that Alpharma, a subsidiary of Pfizer Inc, will voluntarily suspend sale of the animal drug 3-Nitro (Roxarsone) in response to a new FDA study of 100 broiler chickens that detected inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen, at higher levels in the livers of chickens treated with the drug 3-Nitro (Roxarsone) than in untreated chickens. FDA officials stress that the levels of inorganic arsenic detected were very low and that continuing to eat chicken as 3-Nitro is suspended from the market does not pose a health risk.

> 3-Nitro® (Roxarsone) is an arsenic-based animal drug, manufactured by Alpharma LLC, a subsidiary of Pfizer Inc. It is approved to help prevent coccidiosis when used in combination with certain animal drugs. Coccidiosis is a parasitic disease that infects the intestinal tracts in poultry and can lead to death in poultry

> detected inorganic arsenic … at higher levels … chickens treated with the drug … than in untreated chickens

More than 0 seems like a lot in untreated chickens.

With sensitive enough methods you would find arsenic practically anywhere. As well as lead and many other elements toxic above certain concentrations. It’s not binary and the amount (concentration) does matter.

The US owes it to the Vietnamese people to clean up the arsenic, but of course they're never going to do that. I know several elderly Vietnamese who developed leukemia after serving in the war.

If you eat rice, please eat white not brown, parboil it with a ratio of 4:1 water to rice, and dump the water afterwards [0].

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...

If the US was gonna absolve itself of it’s past sins for all countries they’d double or triple the national debt a few times, just trying to rectify what they did to Vietnam & the middle east would be near impossible, then you also have Cuba and probably a bunch more countries I’m forgetting cause this is just off the top of my head.

Not that you’re not making a great point but sadly as you said, it’s never happening

Regarding cleaning up arsenic, straight from the pdf, "Arsenic can never be removed from the environment."

Regarding rice, straight from the pdf, "Organic arsenic is found in soil, water, and food around the world, and is not harmful except at high doses."

Take your arsenic news with a grain of salt, while it is dangerous this pdf is a bit hyperbolic.

"The bottom line is that arsenic is a heavy metal, like lead, and all heavy metals are dangerous and carcinogenic."

Gold, iron, tin are are all "heavy metals" and are certainly not carcinogenic or dangerous.

Those are not considered heavy metals in toxicology.

That's their point. Heavy as in "has some gravity to it" is an unambiguous term in all other sciences except toxicology.

Go ask an astronomer what a “metal” is :)

I guess Iron Maiden should rebrand as Cadmium Maiden

I remember from a video of Cody's Lab that metallic gold is safe, but oxidized gold is toxic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Toxicity But it's very difficult to oxidize gold, and even gold the salts try to go back to the metallic form, so most of the times it's not a problem.

Does anyone know how elevated bladder cancer rates were/are in Vietnam vets?

Every time I read a piece like this or a Wikipedia article on a similarly messed up topic I feel sick to my stomach, wondering how on earth any of the men at the top were morally okay with such horrible acts. I get they weren’t aware of all the negative effects at the time, but cmon, dousing people in herbicides?

I mean, look at what their -intended- goal was. For agent blue it was literally to cause a mass migration via induced starvation. When you've broadened your choices to include that, what's a little long-term cancer risk.

Oh also, we should remember that the US dropped more bombs in Vietnam (Laos and Cambodia) than in WW2.

Have you ever interacted knowingly with sociopath/psychopath to observe them in action and understand things better?

Top brass of any large enough corporation or government body is infested with high functioning variants of such people, its a tough place to even get to, even harder to survive so that's hardly surprising. Don't expect much empathy from such people, if it ain't for their own PR in some way.

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