Nitrates are toxic enough that people (sadly) use them as a suicide agent, so this finding isn't surprising. But it is still surprising that something this toxi

Nitrates are toxic enough that people (sadly) use them as a suicide agent, so this finding isn't surprising. But it is still surprising that something this toxic is so prevalent in food, even in minute quantities, though that's probably mostly due to regulatory capture. I feel like there aren't nearly enough longitudinal studies on food additives like this, I'd like to think that would prevent more harmful things from being used, but probably not.