The Dirty Little Secret About Toxic Metals in Baby Foods

A staff report published on Feb. 4th, 2021 from the US House of Representatives House Committee on Oversight and Reform (who have apparently been tasked with the job the FDA refuses to do) showed that some organic as well as conventional baby food products had significantly elevated levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium. 

These levels were actually from analyses the companies themselves had submitted to Congress: “internal testing policies, test results for ingredients and/or finished products, and documentation about what the companies did with ingredients and/or finished products that exceeded their internal testing limits”. That last piece of information is interesting because in a few instances where the companies (Hain, the makers of “Earth’s Best Organic” brand, Gerber, and Beech-Nut) found high levels of lead, they just went ahead and used the ingredients anyway.  Walmart, Campbell, and Sprout Organic Foods refused to cooperate with the Subcommittee’s investigation. They apparently believe they have something to hide. 

This shocking news, that commercial baby foods contain toxic metals, should not really be so shocking. A significant source of fruit concentrate used in the U.S. (especially apple and grape) comes from China. And much of the soil in China is contaminated with these metals from a variety of sources: coal-burning emissions, fertilizers that contain sewage effluent and industrial waste, and pesticides that contain metals.  Lead and arsenic (known as lead arsenate) are used prolifically as pesticide formulants and have historically permeated even the soil which now produces USDA certified crops in other parts of the world. Due to coal-burning for electricity, atmospheric deposition contributes 50–93% of the arsenic, lead, cadmium, nickel, mercury and chromium in the farmlands in China. 

[Sun Y, Li H, Guo G, Semple KT, Jones KC. Soil contamination in China: Current priorities, defining background levels and standards for heavy metals. J Environ Manage. 2019 Dec 1;251:109512. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109512. Epub 2019 Sep 25. PMID: 31563052.] 

[Peng H, Chen Y, Weng L, Ma J, Ma Y, Li Y, Islam MS. Comparisons of heavy metal input inventory in agricultural soils in North and South China: A review. Sci Total Environ. 2019 Apr 10;660:776-786. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.01.066. Epub 2019 Jan 7. PMID: 30743963.] 

As far as the U.S. goes, things are not that different in our soil. We also use cadmium, arsenic and lead contaminated fertilizers and we burn a lot of coal.  The use of lead arsenate was also popular here in the U.S. starting in the 1860’s- where it was found to be exceptionally good at killing the coddling moth in fruit orchards.  

Lead arsenate was used for approximately 80 years and it was the pesticide of choice with multiple uses for almost 50 years.  Lead arsenate has been used as an insecticide, miticide, fungicide, herbicide, nematicide, and as a “maturity regulator” for grapefruit.  Turf managers of golf courses commonly used lead arsenate to control grubs, earthworms, and Japanese beetles. Lead arsenate has also been used on a variety of vegetables for mosquito control, used in cattle and sheep dips, and used to control that nasty crabgrass and even worse: “night-crawlers”.  

I assume this is referring to earthworms, creatures that actually make soil the verdant, rich medium for growing food that it is. 

In 1988 the EPA formally cancelled registration for arsenical pesticides.  So, within that near-century, millions of pounds of powdered inorganic arsenic or lead arsenate were applied to orchards and farmlands in the U.S. 

[Historic Arsenical Pesticide Research produced for the US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Pesticide Programs Grant #MM988470-01 By Environmental Protection Division Denver Department of Environmental Health https://semspub.epa.gov/work/05/259803.pdf ]  

Now that the sobering reality of worldwide soil contamination is setting in, let’s look at how much of these carcinogenic, neurotoxic, immune-toxic and endocrine-disrupting metals have actually made it into food for developing infants.   

The following comes directly from the US House of Representatives Staff Report: 

Nurture (HappyBABY) sold baby foods after tests showed they contained as much as 180 ppb inorganic arsenic. 

Hain (Earth’s Best Organic) sold finished baby food products containing as much as 129 ppb inorganic arsenic. Hain typically only tested its ingredients, not finished products.  Documents show that Hain used ingredients testing as high as 309 ppb arsenic.  

Beech-Nut used ingredients after they tested as high as 913.4 ppb arsenic.  

Nurture (HappyBABY) sold finished baby food products that tested as high as 641 ppb lead. Almost 20% of the finished baby food products that Nurture tested contained over 10 ppb lead.  

Beech-Nut used ingredients containing as much as 886.9 ppb lead. It used many ingredients with high lead content, including 483 that contained over 5 ppb lead, 89 that contained over 15 ppb lead, and 57 that contained over 20 ppb lead. 75% of Gerber’s carrots contained cadmium in excess of 5 ppb, with some containing up to 87 ppb cadmium.  

Nurture (HappyBABY) sold finished baby food products containing as much as 10 ppb mercury.  

Is this a lot?  Who is regulating these foods?  And, how did this happen? (Sorry- I already answered this last question) 

The actual limit for arsenic in foods in the U.S. only exists for apple juice (10 ppb) and a “guidance” limit for rice cereal products (100 ppb).  The FDA tests many juices and concentrates and has established an internal criteria of 23 ppb for inorganic arsenic for juice, although the reason for this concentration limit is not clear, according to Consumer Reports,  who urge a much more stringent level of 3 ppb for maximum contaminant levels of arsenic in juice.  

 [https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/11/arsenic-in-your-food/index.htm] 

 [Jackson BP, Taylor VF, Punshon T, Cottingham KL. Arsenic concentration and speciation in infant formulas and first foods. Pure Appl Chem. 2012;84(2):215-223. doi: 10.1351/PAC-CON-11-09-17. Epub 2012 Jan 16. PMID: 22701232; PMCID: PMC3371583.] 

[Jackson BP, Taylor VF, Karagas MR, Punshon T, Cottingham KL. Arsenic, organic foods, and brown rice syrup. Environ Health Perspect. 2012 May;120(5):623-6. doi: 10.1289/ehp.1104619. Epub 2012 Feb 16. PMID: 22336149; PMCID: PMC3346791.] 

Why is the Consumer Reports and Consumers Union advocating for a much lower level of allowable arsenic of 3 ppb? This more stringent limit may be because the original guidance (way back in 2001), issued by the National Academy of Sciences for regulation of arsenic in drinking water, recommended a maximum level of .5 ppb based on the Safe Drinking Water Act.  This federal legislation limits water pollutants to levels below those which would cause one additional case of cancer per 10,000 people exposed.  However, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found that at 50 ppb, there was a chance of one cancer case per 100 people exposed. The assumption is that if one person in 100 is at risk at 50 ppb then there would be one case per 500 people exposed at 10 ppb.  This level is still 20 times higher than the normally acceptable level. To achieve the normal standard of one case per 10,000, levels of arsenic would need to be reduced to 0.5 ppb.   

By the way, one person per 500 getting cancer from drinking water exposure is considered unacceptable in every other chemical regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act.   

[https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/arsenic-three-expert-panel-reviews] 

What about lead? The FDA has a bottled-water limit of 5 ppb and no federal limit exists for lead or cadmium in juice. The baby food samples had up to117 times more lead and 69 times more cadmium than the FDA’s maximum allowable levels in bottled water.  Granted, the FDA assumes that water intake will be greater than juice for both adults and children, but that’s not unfortunately the case for some kids.  

The mercury levels in baby food were up to 5 times the level (2.0 ppb) established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water. Drinking water is not a common source of mercury exposure and honestly, infants are more at risk for exposure resulting from in-utero mercury levels in fish-eating mothers.  Given that caveat, 10 ppb of mercury in baby food (.01 mcg/gm food = 1.13 mcg.) per 4 oz. jar is a little over what the EPA allows for mercury exposure through diet: .1 mcg/kg bw/day which comes out to about .9 mcg/day for a 9 kg. 10 month-old infant.  And of course, a thriving 10 month-old will need several jars of baby food per day.  

A Path Forward/ A Personal Essay 

We need to come to terms with the truth about what we’ve done to our environment and that the toxic metals in the soil are persistent, they don’t magically disappear just because they were put there in 1902.  We cannot continue to function under the illusion that organic food and botanicals from China are metal-free (read Food Forensics by Mike Adams for a deeper dive here). 

About 8 years ago, I was working with a group in the U.S. that was training organic farmers to grow Chinese Herbs and the buyer for GAIA Herbs came to our training to emplore us to grow these plants.   She told us GAIA had just instituted a moratorium for purchasing botanicals from China due to the consistent contamination they were finding for arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury.    

I haven’t kept up with GAIA so I don’t know what their current policy is, but I hope they were able to find alternate sources here in the U.S.  

And on the patient care end, it’s our responsibility to investigate sources of metal exposure in our patients, young and old, and to educate them about avoidance. For now, that may mean looking into locally grown organic food and if you live in an urban area, soil testing especially for lead.  There are multiple strategies for cleaning and replenishing the soil, good test cases exist for using fish bones to clean lead out of the soil. 

[Freeman KS. Remediating soil lead with fish bones. Environ Health Perspect. 2012 Jan;120(1):A20-1. doi: 10.1289/ehp.120-a20a. PMID: 22214821; PMCID: PMC3261960.] 

Resources 

The Dartmouth Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program site has great info and research on arsenic in food as well as recommended servings of rice products for kids and adults.  

If you want to learn more about toxic metals and clinical medicine see our past EHS conference lectures on the subject here.