Top chlorella brands confirmed to capture dietary mercury, uranium and aluminum: Another laboratory breakthrough by the Health Ranger

Wednesday, March 19, 2014 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: chlorella, heavy metals, mercury

---

(NaturalNews) If you take chlorella, I've got great news for you today: I've just completed research across nearly a dozen chlorella brands and manufacturers, and I've conclusively documented the fact that they all bind with and capture dietary mercury with very high efficiency. They also show strong affinity for binding with aluminum and uranium, as is detailed below.

At the same time, chlorella showed little or no ability to bind with lead, cadmium, arsenic and cesium. So it's very important to understand what chlorella can and cannot do. Many people and product promoters in the natural health industry make the claim that "chlorella removes heavy metals." This claim is not entirely accurate. As this article (and scientific laboratory results) will show you, chlorella is only good at binding with some heavy metals, but certainly not all of them.

So the claim that "chlorella removes heavy metals" is an example of what I call "fuzzy thinking." It's wishy-washy and blurs the details of what's actually true. If you're taking chlorella, make sure you understand its strengths and weaknesses! And the good news is that chlorella is fantastic at binding with mercury.

Chlorella exceptionally good at binding with dietary mercury

Every brand of chlorella we tested was able to bind with and capture at least 93% of dietary mercury in our gastric acid digestion simulator at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab. Most brands of chlorella captured mercury at 98% - 99% efficiency.

Here are the results we documented across several brands and manufacturers:

Clean Chlorella: 99%
Dr. Mercola Chlorella: 99%
NOW Foods Chlorella: 99%
Source Naturals Chlorella: 98%
Jarrow Formulas Chlorella: 98%
Sun Chlorella: 98%
Earth Circle Foods Chlorella: 98%
Swanson Chlorella: 93%

Chlorella manufacturers and importers:
RFI chlorella: 97%
Taiwan Chlorella (TCMC): 98%
Febico Chlorella (Taiwan): 98%

Looking at these numbers, you may wonder why Swanson Chlorella is considerably lower at 93%. That's because Swanson adds calcium to their chlorella, reducing the chlorella concentration in the final product. Their tablets are not actually 100% chlorella.

But overall, every brand of chlorella we tested was very effective at binding with mercury in the human digestion simulator running at our lab.

Arsenic and cadmium capturing capacity is very low for chlorella

My laboratory tests show that Chlorella is not very good at capturing and binding with arsenic or cadmium, two other prominent heavy metals that threaten human health.

My laboratory tests showed that arsenic was only reduced by a maximum of 6% across the different brands of chlorella. Because the range of error in these measurements is closer to plus or minus 10%, these low numbers for arsenic are insignificant.

It seems that chlorella has little or no ability to bind with arsenic. (I have found other natural substances that bind with arsenic, however, and I will reveal those in future articles.)

Chlorella's binding and capturing potential may be slightly better against cadmium, a toxic heavy metal that contributes to kidney failure. My tests showed cadmium capturing at anywhere from 0% to nearly 9%. But again, as this is all within the range of error, we cannot conclude that chlorella has any validated potential to capture cadmium. (Again, there are other substances which are far better at this.)

Chlorella slightly better at capturing lead, but still not impressive

In my tests, various brands of chlorella were able to capture from a low of about 2% to a high of 17% of lead in our gastric acid digestion simulator.

Although these results are slightly better than arsenic and cadmium, they still aren't very impressive. (I've actually developed a formula that can bind with and capture nearly 100% of lead, and it's not based on chlorella.)

Because of this, I don't consider chlorella to be very strong at binding with lead. This means people who have been trying to take chlorella alongside, for example, Traditional Chinese Medicine herbs in the hope of "blocking" the lead aren't actually achieving the dietary defense they had hoped.

Chlorella extremely good at capturing uranium

The real shocker in all this is that chlorella shows very high affinity for binding with and capturing dietary uranium.

My laboratory tests via ICP-MS show chlorella's uranium capturing capacity from a low of 88% to a high of 97%.

Uranium, by the way, does not have the same sort of toxic profile as lead, cadmium or mercury. It's not normally a high priority element to avoid except in the context of nuclear fallout or for people living in regions which have been hit by depleted uranium weapons.

In a fallout scenario, radioactive uranium isotopes can make their way into food, water and air. From there, they can easily poison anyone living in the area. In that context, dietary protection from radioactive uranium isotopes can be extremely valuable, and chlorella may play a significant role in saving lives in such a scenario. But in day-to-day living, uranium isotopes are normally not a significant threat in the food supply.

Chlorella does not bind with cesium-137

In case you were wondering, chlorella has very little ability to bind with radioactive cesium isotopes such as cesium-134 or cesium-137.

As you probably know if you are a regular Natural News reader, I've already tested over 1,000 candidate substances for cesium binding potential, and I've found a formula that captures radioactive cesium isotopes very effectively. Nearly all substances fail this test, as cesium is a particularly difficult element to capture.

Chlorella's binding potential with cesium isotopes is also very poor, ranging from 0% to a high of just under 15%, but with the bulk of the results coming in under 4%.

Again, these numbers are not scientifically significant, so we must conclude chlorella has no special ability to bind with cesium isotopes.

Chlorella shows aluminum binding potential

Interestingly, chlorella is one of the very few superfoods that has solid potential to bind with dietary aluminum. This property is quite rare, and most foods actually release aluminum rather than binding with it.

Chlorella happens to demonstrate moderate aluminum binding potential. In my tests, I found chlorella to demonstrate from 12% to 42% reduction in aluminum in a synthetic gastric acid solution subjected to simulated digestion.

This is beyond the range of statistical uncertainty, and results were consistently in the above-30% range for most brands.

What this shows is that chlorella is quite effective at binding with and removing free aluminum during digestion.

Summary of chlorella's heavy metals capturing potential

BINDING AND CAPTURING POTENTIAL:
Mercury: Very high
Uranium: High
Aluminum: Mediocre
Lead: Low
Cesium: Near-Zero
Cadmium: Near-Zero
Arsenic: Near-Zero