The risky business of eating in America  Jill
RichardsonOtherWords  October 18, 2012  Long before human beings
decoded the human genome or split the atom, they discovered that
arsenic is very good at killing things. The ancient Romans
prized it as a murder weapon because it could be mixed into food
or drink without altering its color, taste, or smell. Plus, a
tiny dose kills without fail.  What the Romans didn’t know about
arsenic, and what scientists didn’t discover until the 20th
century, is that a form of it — inorganic arsenic — causes
cancer. And in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences found that
the amount of arsenic legally allowed in U.S. drinking water
posed serious cancer risks.  Since then, the U.S. government
slashed the amount allowed in drinking water from 50 micrograms
per liter to just 10. The potent carcinogenicity of arsenic was
what Donald Rumsfeld might call an “unknown unknown” for most of
human history. So was the fact that Americans can consume
dangerous amounts of inorganic arsenic i