The “Environmental Health” report is here: Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product
sugar (pdf)

(Washington Post article):
“‘The bad news is that nobody knows whether or not their soda or snack food contains HFCS made from ingredients like caustic soda contaminated with mercury. The good news is that mercury-free HFCS ingredients exist. Food companies just need a good push to only use those ingredients,’ Wallinga said in his prepared statement.”

Or, how about the fact that there are many alternatives out there that have NO HFCS in the first place?

Your point is well taken, however, even if the fructose were 100% pure it would cause most if not all of these problems.

The problem with fructose is that it is broken down far too quickly rapidly raising the glucose level in the blood stream.

The pancreas can’t react fast enough and the glucose levels spike above safe levels resulting in rapid cross-binding of adjacent proteins with glucose, hardening of the arteries, loss of flexibility in the air sacks in the lungs, loss of accommodating ability in the lenses of our eyes. Fructose causes all of these things to happen six times faster than ordinary table sugar.

And then this huge spike in blood-sugar levels causes the pancreas eventually to over-react, put out too much insulin, and store that sugar as fat instead of burning it.

Overtime our fat cells become less sensitive to insulin overshoots and we end up being diabetic.

The stuff is plain evil, and the chemical contamination you mention that results from a 30-step process only exacerbates the situation.

The corn industry lobbyists have really screwed us in so many ways, food additives are just one of them.

In 2000, flex-fuel cars could run on any combination of ethanol, methanol, and gasoline, after 2000 only ethanol and gasoline. Why? Cause you can make methanol from cheap waste material, ethanol comes from corn.

You can also make ethanol from sugar beats, and you get about 400% return in energy if you do so, where with corn at best you can get a 30% return, and with corn you need more than 4x the acreage to produce the same amount of ethanol.

ADM and the like are bastards bent on profits at all costs, regardless of what human and environmental expenses they impose.

The reason fructose is not tested by the FDA is that it is a natural ingredient in tree fruits, berries, melons, and some vegetables.

It’s not that fructose is toxic in and of itself. It ultimately gets broken down into glucose and used by the body in the same manner as other sugars. The problem comes from the fact that it breaks down very rapidly.

In these foods, it is packaged by nature with a lot of fiber. This causes it to be absorbed slowly avoiding a rapid blood sugar spike and the problems associated with that.

But in a syrup form, as in corn syrup, it’s absorbed extremely rapidly, directly in the stomach before it even passes into the intestines, and causes a huge blood sugar spike. This forces the pancreas to react by excreting a huge dose of insulin to bring blood sugar down. Before long fat cells become plump and unresponsive to insulin and you have diabetes. The pancreas has to work extra hard to yea, not surprised that pancreatic cancer might result.

But just to be clear; corn in reasonable amounts is not inherently evil, neither are fruits and vegetables that contain fructose along with healthy amounts of fiber.

What is problematic is growing corn genetically engineered for high fructose yields, pressing syrup from that, and then consuming it not integrated with large amounts of fiber so that it is absorbed rapidly, which is what happens when you eat any number of prepared food items that incorporate high fructose corn syrup.

Personally, I’m in favor of education rather than outlawing substances. I think all food substances with sugars ought to be labeled with their glycemic index boldly on the containers so that one can readily decide what to avoid and then the market would address the issue.

(“CSPI to sue… over ‘All Natural’ 7_Up”)
(“7-Up drops claim”)

What gets me as well is that there’s lately rarely any choice other than (a) chem-lab-experiment “high-fructose corn syrup”, (b) chem-lab-experiment “aspartame”, or (c) chem-lab-experiment “Splenda”. I especially cringe at the circular definition of Splenda (“Splenda contains Sucralose” … “Sucralose(n): Splenda brand sweetener”). What does few-years-old chem-lab treated (“chlorinated”) sugar do internally that makes it “healthier” than known-for-centuries sugar?

(holsiticmed.com/aspartame)
(holisticmed.com/sucralose)