http://www.who.int/environmental_health_emergencies/disease_outbreaks/chemical_diseases/en/ Right here the WHO admits very vaguely that "There are many examples of disease outbreaks that are caused by exposure to chemicals or toxins". They do not give but one example but do admit it has happened.

This is not arsenic but I am sure that arsenic also interferes with calcium uptakes.

This was from a paper on Aluminum Toxicity and Plant tolerance:

"Aluminum interferes with the uptake, transport and use of several essential elements, including Cu, Zn, Ca, Mg, Mn, K, P and Fe. Excess of Al reduces the uptake of certain elements and increases that of others, the patterns being dependent on the element, the plant part and species involved. A major factor is the pH concentration. At an acid pH, below 5.5, the antagonism between Ca and Al is probably the most important factor affecting Ca uptake by plants."

Jeannette Bishop:

Leeching or leaching all sounds the same, so from where I am from it is a given that they can be used interchangeable and I do it all the time with here and hear. LOL!

Flint was treating the water just like it was still a very populated city. Putting in little phosphates and lots more chlorine The water set in the pipes and the chorine eat away the phosphate lining in the pipes and was not being replaced

Here is a good article -- with pictures even.

. http://michiganradio.org/post/flints-water-system-healing-itself-says-epa#stream/0

Benedetta, here's more on pressure-treated wood and the arsenic leeching out of it:

http://www.finegardening.com/does-pressure-treated-wood-belong-your-garden

Thanks so much for explaining the lead corrosion coming off of or out of the coils of whatever a vacuum pan is when subjected to acid treatments to remove the lime build up on said coils (I think I really needed an extra explanation--and I hope I really do get it now).

My GoogleU does bring up lots of Hawaiian links with an "arsenic sugarcane" search and a blip (link on page 2 of my search) about Pakistan and water contamination with arsenic, believed to be from pesticide use:

http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijema.s.2015030301.13.pdf

Wikipedia says that polio is still considered endemic there and in Afghanistan...

And there was this headache of a puzzle... http://www.ticotimes.net/2015/02/17/study-links-sugarcane-fieldwork-with-kidney-disease-epidemic-in-central-america ... something seems to be more dangerous for the kidneys (particularly for young men) harvesting sugarcane than in applying pesticides to sugarcane.

Also, sugarcane bagasse and activated charcoal seem to be pretty effective for arsenic removal from water:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11270-014-2028-4
http://ws.iwaponline.com/content/13/2/319

I don't know if that indicates sugarcane is likely to uptake arsenic through the roots or from external exposure, but your description (reference?) of a "thirsty plant" had me envisioning the plant drinking up pesticides particularly.

And (from a different GoogleU search) they are now researching the use of sugarcane in constructed wetlands to help with water filtration, but I can't tell (as most of these go over my head and I get tired of swimming and stop reading after briefest of perusals) if there is any aim or understood function of removing metals (mostly seems to be about removing "nutrients"):

http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/8/3/93/pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925857413004552

Though higher levels of lead and cadmium were observed in cultivated polluted wetland crops (cocoyam? and sugarcane) here...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1770.2010.00430.x/abstract

...with expressed concern about polluting/cultivating in such areas.

And this suggests that uptake of arsenic does happen (I can't judge how significantly), and the amount might vary by species:

http://www.jorae.cn/fileup/PDF/20120411.pdf

"How to best use farmland contaminated with low to moderate levels of heavy metals remains a challenge in many parts of the world. Here, we screened sugar cane varieties to identify those with a low ability to accumulate heavy metals and with high tolerance."

So if you aim to use "low to moderate"ly contaminated farmland, it's nice to know they are now theoretically looking at what species actually uptake less (in China anyway).

Here we just saturate our fields with CAFO waste that can't be legally dumped in rivers, etc...so should I be glad we don't (can't?) grow sugarcane in the lower 48? (And should I be glad that I can't really eat any anymore anyway--why might that be?)

And we're maybe still using "modified arsenic pesticides" on cotton:

http://www.wired.com/2012/06/arsenic-pesticides-in-our-food/
"Even so, arsenate pesticides were not officially banned in the United States until the 1980s. (And modified arsenic pesticides such as MMA and DMA are still approved for use on cotton)."

a round of answers -- the "scale" stuck to coils in the vacuum pan and boiling it out with acid caused the lead in the coils to dissolve as well as the scale. (i rephrased the article to make that clear.)

"the principal objection they had found to our sugars last season was the formation of heavy scale on the vacuum pan coils, making it necessary to boil them out with caustic soda and acid every two weeks. The soda dissolved the lead in the joints of the pan coils and walls in the pan, causing leaks."
as you point out this could also be a toxic "ingredient" in the finished product although presumably they boiled the scale in between periods of refining. i don't have a lot of confidence in their quality control -- "they had been able to reduce the quantity of scale by using carbonate of soda in the melt liquor, but it was too expensive."

arsenic in cotton is another interesting subject.

as to what eckart, agee and norris knew or suspected about arsenic as an issue with the problems with sediment and grain ... we'll never know. i wonder if the refiners knew there had been a new pesticide in use at Olaa. probably not, it's a long way away and a small part of the sugar they got every year, and arsenic was the glyphosate of its day -- widespread and "safe." did it occur to anybody after the polio outbreak began that there might be a connection? again we'll never know. they did seem to change strategies for fighting weeds, as benedetta points out, but why they did that and what role arsenic played going forward is something i don't have a grip on but hope to figure out someday.
people make fun of google as a research tool, of course, and i spend a lot of time in places like the national library of medicine and the national agricultural library here in washington. but just google arsenic and sugarcane and you'll see it comes up in hawaii, and specifically olaa, but almost nowhere else on earth and no specific references after 1916 that i could find. it's like it drops into a black hole. -- dan

Lime is a generic word for a whole lot of different types of Calcium and something else.

Great research by the way; to find the manufacturers notes on this sugar and interesting that the guys from Hawaii came over to have a look see - hmmmmm, I do wonder.

Did R.S. Norris, know about the arsenic treatment -how involved was he? H.P. Agee did know that spraying of arsenic but did he say anything - bet he didn't. .

But they switched over to cover cloths after that year cause it is clear that production of sugar cane went down, and on top of that the sugar factory said that the golden syrup was clouded and thus was selling it off cheap.

It looks like R.S Norris and Agree and Echart decided not to mention to the sugar producers that that organic precipitate might be laced with arsenic. They had to wonder and worry about it -- and they all know all that can happen with arsenic poisoning . Living in those big plantation houses was just too much of a draw -- that and a reputation. Keep quiet and it will all blow over.

"...corroded lead in the refinery tanks..."

Where was the lead coming from? Another case of synergy?

@dan fascinating as always!

It's hard to believe that no one did an analysis of the impurities in the cane syrup or the grains. Seems like that would have been an obvious concern for the growers/refiners...

To me, what is also enigmatic about the NYC "polio" epidemic are the ages of children that had (from many medical references) already gone through subclinical or asymptomatic "polio infection in their gastrointestinal systems" by age one and one-half years, thus being becoming naturally immune.

As Mrs. Franklin should already been immune; after all "poliomyelitis" was long known as 'infantile paralysis.' And, as Dan & Mark long ago made the case about FDR being crippled in the prime of life it seems almost certain his more accurately described Guillane Barre Syndrome (not polio) was from toxic pesticides/fungicides or industrial paper-making chemicals in the cold waters he swam in just prior to his paralysis.

Frequently in the midst of a sudden crisis (real or imagined) the Medical System has thrown all similar illness cases (in this case, muscle flaccidity, death, etc.) into a single basket. In the case of NYC in 1916, it seems plausible that arsenic-tainted sweets of every source including ice cream are one THE best suspects. The article I sent to Dan (I appreciate his mentioning it) is a must read for those digging deeper. One bottom line conclusion for me is the present day mania demanding World-Wide polio vaccination is clearly the wrong (and toxic) way to go.