How Did Arsenic Get in My Organic Rice

I just spent an obscene amount of time sifting through material to purchase a water filter.  I wrote about it here, in my post 5 Steps to Find a Water Filter.  One of the contaminants that we are looking to remove is arsenic.

There are 2 forms of arsenic
Pentavalent and Trivalent - Pentavalent arsenic is listed as being taken out by most RO filters.  Trivalent needs a special filter or free chlorine to convert to the 'easier to filter' pentavalent.

Now what does this have to do with aresenic in rice.  Or your organic leafy greens.  Or your kid's organic apple juice.  WTF.  How did this happen?

Well let's think about this a second.  I buy a water filter, and so many people do, to filter out arsenic.   And it is expensive.  But are the farmers growing our food filtering their water for the crops?  Probably not.  So the food we eat drinks the water we filter - unfiltered.  Then we eat the food.

Huh.  What's one to do?

We need to go back.  We've become so accustomed to this idea of just taking out the things we don't like or don't need - because we can have it 'our way.'  That we've forgotten sometimes the best thing to do is not do it to begin with. 

There is this looming threat that making industry clean up its filthy act is somehow going to cause an economic meltdown.  We'll be out of jobs, have no access to credit, less food, or God forbid - no television.  We walk around ignoring, shrugging our shoulders.... 'oh well, I gotta go to work now.... nothing I can do about it.... hey did you see the new iphone...'  Not a care in the world.  We'll just filter it out of our water.

But there's a huge flaw here.  There's a kind of fantastical denial of reality here.  It's like the revelry in the city at carnival, in the small, yet hugely populated, city - while the vast land that supports the city is raped to the point of death - where a handful of years later - even those in the city will feel it's suffering.  When the poisons of industry have been so thoroughly spread across the Earth that there will be no pristine corner left. 

I don't know, I'm on a rant.  I go to work too.  I work for a man on a quest to get rich at all costs.  He doesn't care who he screws - as long as his sports car is shined, his wife quaffed, his kids equiped with the latest gadget.  He's a nice guy - you know - he'd buy you a beer and chat you up with jokes.  But he will not tolerate anyone playing with his road to riches.   He is an industry man.  He's the kind of man whose sold us a vision to suit his purpose.

It's sad, but we've been hypnotized into believing that we need all this crap... so much so that we've allowed a handful of pied pipers to lead us like sheep to slaughter.  We've handed over the keys to our homes, our children, ourselves - for tech gadgets, sexy handbags, and martini bars. 

Health is politics.  And until all of us pursuing health, stop looking for ways to undo the damage - and start looking and engaging in ways to stop the damage to begin with - our health will teeter in perpetual turmoil.

So how did arsenic get into your rice?  rice milk?  rice formula?  potatoes?  leafy greens?  you?

We let them put it there.  We sat back, we are sitting back - as we all contribute to our own demise.  We're creating a world where future generations may not live longer, or even as long, as past generations.  But 'hell,' we say 'at least they lived fast.'  Yes, fast, cheap, and out of control.   Trading our health and life for cheap disposable shit.