In January of 2012, Consumer Reports found 10% of apple juice samples tested from five brands had total arsenic levels above the drinking water standard of 10 parts per billion. Most of that arsenic was inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen. American apple juice is made from apple concentrate, a majority of which is imported from China. Inorganic Arsenic has been detected as AsH3following reduction via AA or ICP MS. The cost of these types of spectrometers is in the $60-200K price range. Many labs would have to choose the older colorimetric methods but we have developed and modified the hydride generation-PID method for arsenic in water analysis at ppb levels (1) to work with food and juice. The system cost is a fraction of the $200K spectrometer price. We will describe the modifications of the new method for arsenic in apple juice as well as the comparison results with ICP-MS.  (1) Driscoll, JN and GA Cutter, �Total and Speciated Arsenic Compounds in Water by Photoionization and Gas Chromatography/PID�in 'Toxic Trace Metal Remobilization & Remediation - A Geochemical Body of Work' to be published by the ACS (2012)

Comparison of sensitive methods for the measurement of inorganic arsenic in apple juice:  Photoionization (PID) and ICP-MS

245th National Meeting (2013)

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