On April 2 the Los Angeles Times published an article titled “A tale of arsenic and old ways”, which related to the warning of the FDA about the contents of the high amount of arsenic in Jermuk mineral water.
“For generations, bottled mineral water from the town of Jermuk has been a kind of national tonic in Armenia, proudly sipped like a fine chardonnay in California or taken for its perceived medicinal value, like chicken soup. As the Armenian population here has grown, demand for the water has grown with it,” writes the newspaper. “Jermuk water is second only to cognac as the Armenian national drink. I am 55 and since my childhood I have been listening to the story of Jermuk, which is like the American Pie,” said Harut Sassounian, publisher of a Glendale-based newspaper for the Armenian community and president of the United Armenian Fund, a humanitarian group. “Its popularity extends to ethnic Armenians who grew up in other countries around the world,” he said.
“Federal rules permit no more than 10 micrograms of arsenic per liter of bottled water; U.S. government lab tests showed that the recalled water had between 454 and 674 micrograms per liter. (A liter equals about a quart.) But that’s well within Armenian safety limits, wrote Naira Manucharova, a spokeswoman with the Armenian Consular General in Beverly Hills, in an e-mail to the Times. The Armenian health ministry permits arsenic levels up to 700 micrograms per liter. Jermuk water naturally contains arsenic,” she wrote. "At the tested concentrations, there is a chance that drinking a single half-liter bottle of the water a day may not cause illness. But continuous heavy consumption – three or four liters a day – could trigger toxic effects," said Acheson, chief medical officer for the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.