Pesticide linked to reproductive issues found in Cheerios, Quaker Oats and other oat-based foods
Source: CBS News
Updated on: February 16, 2024 / 1:32 PM EST
A little-heard-of pesticide linked to infertility in animals is showing up in the overwhelming majority of oat-based foods sold in the United States, including popular cereal brands Quaker Oats and Cheerios.
The chemical, chlormequat, was detected in 77 of 96 urine samples taken from 2017 and 2023, with levels increasing in the most recent years, a new study by the Environmental Working Group finds. Further, chlormequat was found in 92% of oat-based foods sold in May 2023, including Quaker Oats and Cheerios, according to the research published Thursday in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.
Some studies have shown chlormequat can damage the reproductive system and disrupt fetal growth in animals, a cause for concern as to "whether it could also harm humans," EWG stated.
Environmental Protection Agency regulations allow chlormequat to be used on ornamental plants only, not food crops, grown the U.S. However, its use has been allowed since 2018 on imported oats and other foods sold across the country, and the EPA is now proposing to let chlormequat be used on barley, oat, triticale and wheat grown in the U.S — a plan the EWG opposes.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cheerios-quaker-oats-infertility-chemicals-in-cereal-ewg/
Link to EWG PRESS RELEASE - New peer-reviewed EWG study finds little-known toxic crop chemical in four out of five people tested
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Not all the time, not all brands. I am very sensitive to different brands of ice cream. It's the stretchers and fillers. Also some brands. The top half of the carton will make me sick (because it's exposed to air as they seal it), while the bottom half does not.
Grains are a crap shoot. I guess I'm going to have to try organic all the way. Breads are same, some good some bad. I've eliminated most pork and turkey because of carbadox and ractopamine. And finally my inflammation is settling down. I've gone very light on oats for about 8 months. It just doesn't appeal to me anymore. I do notice McCann's Irish oats don't bother me! 
Doctors are no help. They only treat symptoms and never get down to the root cause of illness.
In the presence of salt, cooking food can and does generate chloromequat:
Occurrence of the Plant Growth Regulator Chlormequat in Food May Be Due to Natural Formation: A Preliminary Mechanistic Study Bjørn Eriksen, Aurélien Desmarchelier, Nancy Frank, Richard H. Stadler, and Thierry Delatour Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2020 68 (29), 7727-7733.
A graphic from that paper showing the structural relationships:
By adding salt to an egg/wheat powder mix and heating it, the authors showed the generation of chlormequat.
The authors concluded thus:
The concentrations found in the original paper that has been mangled by journalists, as most journalistic interpretations of science are, Temkin, A.M., Evans, S., Spyropoulos, D.D. et al. A pilot study of chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol (2024).
It is notable that the matrix utilized in their study was urine, not plasma, and thus may show a short biological half-life, that is after exposure it is quickly pissed away. In mass balance studies, we often follow the physiological fate of molecules.
As a herbicide, chloromequat interferes with gibberellin synthesis, with the gibberellins being plant complex terpenoid hormones generated for stem growth and other aspects of plant physiology. Selective breeding of grain crops is thought to have selected for reduced gibberellin synthesis, leading to higher yields in crops, as a result of the "green revolution" (agricultural and not connected to the much hyped but questionably existent failed energy policies also discussed in our media). This "green revolution" unlike the failed energy "green revolution" is thought to have saved billions of lives.
It is known to interact with some of the cytochrome P450s which have evolved in all living things and are involved in biochemical transformations. One such transformation is metabolism of toxins. This study would have been more useful if it followed plasma levels and included metabolomic features.
I suspect that this is a tempest in a teapot to use the cliche.
I frequently joke that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course. People have been cooking food for many tens of thousands of years, often salted foods.
Mass spectrometry, with which I am professionally involved, is an extremely sensitive technology, capable of detecting, and in fact quantitating, molecules at the scale now routinely at the low picogram per ml level. There is a huge difference between the level of detection and physiological effects. We can now see and detect things that have been in the environment for a very long time but were not previously detectable. There is a difference between detection and physiological importance.
In many ways, we see culturally aspects of the novel "A Handmaiden's Tale" which included reference to mass sterility among women. This part of the novel has yet to be observed, although the re-subjugation of women is underway.
For me! God dammit..........
