Submitted by: Kathy Hawkins
Why Is Pesticide Used As An Ingredient In Infant Formula?
Why is cupric sulfate -- a known herbicide, fungicide and pesticide -- being used in infant formula? And why is it displayed proudly on product labels as a presumably nutritious ingredient?
Used to kill fungus, aquatic plants and roots of plants, parasitic infections in aquarium fish and snails, as well as algae and bacteria such as Escherichia coli, cupric sulfate hardly sounds fit for human consumption, much less for infants.
Indeed, infants are all too often looked at as "miniature adults" from the perspective of toxicological risk assessments, rather than what they are: disproportionately (if not exponentially) more susceptible to the adverse effects of environmental exposures. Instead of reducing or altogether eliminating avoidable infant chemical exposures (the precautionary principle), the chemical industry-friendly focus is always on determining "an acceptable level of harm" – as if there were such at thing!
It boggles the imagination how cupric sulfate ended up in infant formula, as well as scores of other consumer health products, such as Centrum and One-A-Day vitamins?
