HOW does the metal content get into the product?

Is it from 'slop' in the manufacturing process? Are these metals somehow inherent in the food chain?

Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand, something like a baby food jar of carrots is basically carrots. They take carrots, boil them until they are soft, mash them, package them, and sell them.

Is the metal content somehow in the carrots themselves because it was in the soil? Is it from pesticides or fertilizer? Is the metal somehow introduced during the production process?

> No amount of lead is safe according the the WHO and USA government. Zero. That's the problem. Its not the level its what should be deemed normal amount vs not normal. And these PPB amounts are really low as is.

The original text says the proposed limit would be between 5 ppb vs. 15 ppb. Would that be a reasonable limit? Is that being exceeded here?

There must be some level that makes sense. We can’t let obviously contaminated soil with lead levels that will definitely cause cognitive issues be acceptable, so where is the line.

> The fact the manufactures say there doing a good job, you might have to believe them until proven otherwise.

Why would I care about what the manufacturer thinks or says? I care about whether the levels of heavy metal are safe or not.

ANY amount of lead at all above zero is bad. The problem is your not going to live one day without any lead consumed. I think if you realize they are taking about 15 PPB (parts per billion) you will laugh your butt off. Its literally 15 parts of lead per billion. If you ate 1 billion pieces of sand you would get 15 pieces of lead. So if you ate the whole beach youd get 15 sand granules of lead. Seriously its stupid, i think smelling a fart is worse for your mind and body then this stuff they are talking about.

They don’t. Most of them don’t become involved with any official government. Many don’t read, or have paperwork regarding their existence. There are no roads or services in that part of the world.

Couldnt agree more with this person. These fools look like fools and act like fools. There fools call em out.

That’s an intense question! Hope you don’t ever interview me for a job ;) I truly don’t believe there would be a consistent message. I think if I went back and asked, I’d get a different answer to give you from every person. The elders and those in Siberia have such a deep nature-shamanism connection that it would probably be something akin to honoring the earth and the spirit world. But, for many, I was just from ‘afar’. They asked about my family life, or how our house was, what animals I had. I think they imagined other people lived similarly to them, or in tiny villages they had seen, just in a different place. So the messages would all be probably related to that culture and their experiences.

No amount of lead is safe according the the WHO and USA government. Zero. That's the problem. Its not the level its what should be deemed normal amount vs not normal. And these PPB amounts are really low as is. Yes varying soil has different amounts, the problem is they all have some. My whole point is where is the labs for multiple samples of each vegetable to show some form of bad judgments by the manufactures. The fact the manufactures say there doing a good job, you might have to believe them until proven otherwise. Its a stupid lawsuit trying to grab money because unless they dont use naturally grown foods they will have lead, but these people above can sue and win because the law has limits that are not set according to enough research and thought.

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Root grown veggies have the most heavy metals being that the distance to leech is much less. Potatoes, carrots, thing found in baby foods and our foods.

Wow- that’s a popular question! So I don’t have to keep rewriting it, feel free to look at the answer I just made above your post. It was a lot of taking chances.

I don’t understand why I’m downvoted. How is this a controversial opinion? I want to know whether the amount of lead in the food, no matter whether that lead comes from soil or anywhere else, is harmful or not.

Wow, thank you!

I knew Siberian reindeer herders existed, and I knew Mongolia had nomads. I had read about them in National Geographic magazines and in a few atlas references. I started from there, and researched. Not google so much, this was around 2010 and books were still more prevalent 😆 I just worked a lot and saved a little, and never took PTO. Cashed it out when I left- they had to give me all the PTO hours earned at whatever my current pay rate was. Then put my stuff in a little storage unit (outside the city to get a better deal) and got a one way ticket.

Russia: I found vague hints at the reindeer herders and learned there were many regions and subgroups of them. I visited Russia once, made connections with traders (this was a very long process and I got scammed a few times), then came back when the season was better to meet up with them. Luckily one of the girls I met in a hostel helped me make sure it was all real. I was to help them with their big autumn migration in exchange for staying with them. I would also bring out supplies they wanted from the trader. It was meant to be just for the season, but the women agreed to let me stay after that. (Gender segregation, so mostly what happened to me was decided by the grandmothers)

Mongolia: I actually had a Mongolian woman in my university who became a good friend. Her brother-in-law was from a Kazakh goat herding family, and he left their nomadic family to move to the city. So she put me in touch with him. I stayed with his very distantly related cousins, his family didn’t need/want help but his cousins had just acquired another set of yaks and goats and wanted help. I could already horseback ride, and had herding experience, so they agreed I would help in exchange for room/board. No timeline was set, it was just more like ‘for a long time’.

But soil itself has different amounts of lead. For example, some soil is still contaminated by the use of leaded fuel which has been banned for a while now. The question is not where the lead comes from, but whether the level is considered acceptable or not. A developing brain does not care whether unsafe amounts of lead come from soil or somewhere else. That is the only question I’m interested in settling here: Are these amounts unsafe or not.

Thank you :) I will reflect on this today

So what are the safe levels, and are they exceeded here or not? I’m aware that there may be trace amount of heavy metals in even (or especially) the most natural food, but I’m also aware that some circumstances in manufacturing lead to levels that are decidedly over that.

Yeah but its not unsafe. Did you know you consumed lead today, 100%. If these people were actually smart they would have research showing lead results for varies grown vegetables showing that the product should have lower amounts. Instead they just say its unsafe and not actually comparing it to anything. I mean if carrots have a average amount of lead of 10ppb and your carrot baby food has 10ppb what can you do? Not sell carrots or figure out what chemicals you can add to your process to remove the metal. Do you want more processed foods for your baby or more natural...

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By the way the lead and heavy metals are most likely coming from veggies. Its in all soil grown food.

The amount of lead is what they're arguing is unsafe if you would have read what they posted.

They aren't. Lead is in soil, its a naturally occurring element. Its on the periodic table. Anything that grows in soil leeches up SUPER DUPER small amounts of lead. 15 ppb is literally if you got 1 billion pieces of sand 15 of them are lead. A billion is a big number bigger then most people can imagine. These people are ridiculously trying to scare more people.

This literally forces the manufactures to not use fruits/vegitables in their food. Which leads to even more processed unhealthy foods because someone is sueing someone over something. I think most people would want their babies eating healthy foods instead of processed to death foods to avoid a rational amount of lead.

So, my findings are only speculation in Siberia because being in a place for a couple years doesn’t really give me a long term trend, but a lot of the reindeer herders were telling me they have had to change their routes, and more animals die in summer now. The bugs are so terrible, worse and worse every year, because the winters are not long or harsh enough to kill them off. We sometimes would have to go very far out of the way to find water, because snowmelt wouldn’t last as long as it used to. But in living where I do and spending over 10 years in the far north now, I’d say this is consistent with my overall experiences. The permafrost is melting which causes all sorts of problems, seasides collapse so the birds don’t nest, the ground is too soft and muddy so animals and trees are sinking. The insects don’t die off and cause real issues.

> > The more you eat of a given food, the more metals from that food build up in your system.

> This is a high-school level of understanding of biomagnification. It doesn't work like that.

Well, how does it work then? The statement does not say there is a linear relationship or anything else like that, just that “the more you eat, the more metals will accumulate”. Unless the function is not monotonic, which seems unlikely (at some point the amount of metals accumulated will be less?), this seems like a true statement. Maybe too trivially so to be relevant, but true nonetheless.

I wish your comment was more constructive. It contains a lot of criticisms, without any of the actual substance of how things purportedly are. As a parent, I am willing to consider what you say, but with just “no wrong” there’s not much to go on by here?

> as no baby is sucking down liters of the same baby food every day, but it is something that should get more attention.

My baby is too young to be interested in drinking any amount of water. We try, but he does not accept it. This is normal for that age. So he ends up eating amounts of similar baby foods every day. Not liters, but still a lot compared to his body weight.

Once again, I’m not sure what to make of this. If my baby does “suck down” large amounts of the same baby food every day, should we be worried or not?

This is slander at best. Do yall actually know what your talking about or just going for money. Things that are grown in soil will ALWAYS have lead in them. It leaches up from the soil where These DANGEROUS HEAVY METALS are naturally occuring and here naturally. Unless you want babies eating entirely processed foods your getting lead. Its ok.

The issue is complex and multifaceted. One aspect of the problem with baby foods is that heavy metals can wind up in foods before they're even processed by manufacturers. One example we note in the story is inorganic arsenic, which rice can absorb naturally as it grows in water. The presence of these metals in the environment is an issue the FDA has said it's taking into account as it develops action levels for metals in baby foods.

--Celine Castronuovo

>In your opinion, is this the fault of the FDA, or lawmakers (politicians or appointment management) for not providing the FDA with the necessary tools to combat this issue?

The FDA argues that they have to balance the metal content in products with availability and that some of these metals appear naturally in the environment.

The general consensus from sources we’ve talked to is that the FDA could do more.

Here’s a little more from Stu’s interview with Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi that didn’t make the story:

“They're acting way too slowly. And I think as for why that is occurring, I'm not sure except that you know, there is a certain inertia, initial resistance to moving perhaps more rapidly than they are. And it's also possible that there's industry pressure that is preventing more rapid implementation of this Closer to Zero program.”

“I think that the bottom line is that, you know, parents desperately want the FDA to do his job and regulate these heavy metals and baby food. And they also want industry to be responsive, which they're not, and we can't just expect industry to regulate itself. It doesn't work, as you can see from your own test results.”

If you want to read more about the food problems within FDA, read this Politico examination of the problem wider from April.

- Gary

Hah! Someone else just asked that, under another question! So I don’t have to write it out twice, you can find it on a sub-response (probably wrong term) where I titled a response, ‘daily life:’

Note, I’m not a doctor! Both peoples seemed healthy. They were certainly active, even the elders. Both seemed happy, overall. There seemed to be more discontent amongst the younger Kazakh goat herders, but they also have more interaction with the outside world than those in Siberia. So perhaps it is just seeing that other options are out there. The Siberian nomads have lots of rules on cleanliness and washing and what touches what which has probably helped with managing germs or diseases. The Tavan Bogd nomads to a lesser extent. The only thing I was truly surprised about health wise was the state of their teeth. Not a lot of dental hygiene in either group and even young teens had rotten teeth (not a lot, but some). For not having sugar, this surprised me.

Why are these baby food manufacturing companies putting heavy metals in baby food they manufacture?

I've learned not to expect much scientific literacy from people who haven't ever taken a chemistry or physics course and have been in the advertisement matrix for their entire careers.