This is a great article on the biology of lead exposure.
Unfortunately on the exposure side research wasn’t done and it propagates the myth that lead exposure is only an issue for those with lead pipes or lead paint. It’s true that these are the main sources of severe lead exposure. However the article points out that there is no safe level of exposure to lead and these aren’t the main ways we are exposed to lead in the US anymore.
Today we are mostly exposed by low level contamination and thankfully this usually results in only mildly elevated lead levels. In a toddler sticking things in the mouth this could be almost any object. For adults it is food and drinks and the objects we use to make them.
I know this because my toddler had elevated lead levels even though our neighborhood never had lead paint and our water does not have lead (I tested the water coming out of our faucets).
The US has few laws against lead contamination and they aren’t very stringent and there is little proactive enforcement. This non profit has ended up creating several recalls after reporting their own testing: https://tamararubin.com/category/recall/ Most of the recalls were products marketed for children such as baby bottles. But if a child eats off an adult plate there aren’t any laws against that being contaminated.
Some actions you can take are:
* test children’s lead levels and your own
* make sure toddlers aren't playing with old toys (pre 1978 really risky, after 2010 is best)
* stop buying things that have a prop 65 warning (I know prop 65 isn’t perfect, but it’s often a lead warning).
* Remove risky objects like the above from your children’s classrooms.
* For cooking and food and drinks use clear glass, stainless steel, and cast iron
* avoid processed foods. There are a lot of particulars here about what is most likely to be high in lead. Chocolate, spices, salt, and cassava products are particularly high in heavy metals.>stop buying things that have a prop 65 warning (I know prop 65 isn’t perfect, but it’s often a lead warning).
That would seem to mean to stop buying an enormous number of things. Extended to locations, it would mean not parking in any enclosed parking lot, or entering a number of different stores. It's not clear to me it's even possible to avoid everything with a prop 65 warning. Unfortunately, the bad incentives involved (private actions mean there is a risk for not putting a warning if some law firm can try to argue to a court in a civil action that you might be exposing people to something, while at the same time there is no penalty or cost at all to putting a completely unnecessary and bogus warning when you don't actually know of any risk) make it so that the safest option is just to put a warning.
There's a good episode of 99% Invisible that discusses Prop 65, including an interview with the original author of Prop 65, David Roe: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-...
Yes, there are a lot of problems with Prop 65, but the podcast also highlights the benefits. Slapping a Prop 65 warning on foodstuffs in particular significantly decreases sales, so it's not something you just do merely to avoid extortionate lawsuits. It incentives testing beforehand, and if you find contaminants to then reformulate. Notwithstanding the seeming ubiquity of Prop 65 warning labels in California, the salient effects are significant and largely hidden--you don't notice all the products that don't have the label, and don't because they were reformulated to avoid the label. Prop 65 was one of the most significant drivers in the US of the removal of lead and other contaminants in products. The author of the bill admits the unintended consequences have been significant, especially harassment lawsuits, but he also argues there aren't really good alternatives that could have achieved what Prop 65 has with a better cost/benefit ratio.
Having an army of private lawyers vigorously prowling for contaminants in products is a pillar of Prop 65's success. You couldn't achieve what Prop 65 has with centralized regulation, not without creating tremendous (i.e. costly in time if not money) bureaucratic hurdles to creating and selling products in the market. Prop 65 is a kind of "ask for forgiveness" model, rather than "ask for permission". The former is generally more preferable if you want to preserve market dynamism and profitability, while also minimizing the risk of regulatory capture, and lax, haphazard enforcement. Moreover, you get the escape hatch of just adding a warning label, without having to take your product off the market.
There is a centralized regulatory aspect to Prop 65--the State of California's list of contaminants--subject to typical bureaucratic and lobbying externalities. But on balance Prop 65 seems defensible, however imperfect. After listening to the podcast, which if anything leaned into Prop 65 criticism, I softened my views on Prop 65.
>Having an army of private lawyers vigorously prowling for contaminants in products is a pillar of Prop 65's success. You couldn't achieve what Prop 65 has with centralized regulation, not without creating tremendous (i.e. costly in time if not money) bureaucratic hurdles to creating and selling products in the market.
What makes cancer and reproductive risks unique such that labelling for them cannot be enforced by the government, and needs to be done by private enforcers motivated by profit? Why could the same type of law not simply be enforced, in a largely similar way, by a government agency?
I would generally agree that Prop 65 has had benefits, and that such labelling, in principle, could be a good thing (even if I'd really prefer if there were some requirement to actually give at least some explanation when putting a label). But the private enforcement has never made sense to me, unless one takes the view that the state actually opposes labelling and can't be trusted to enforce it.
> What makes cancer and reproductive risks unique
I realize this is the first-half of a compound question, but those jump out to me as cases where there can be years between harmful exposure and someone noticing the damage.
> What makes cancer and reproductive risks unique such that labelling for them cannot be enforced by the government, and needs to be done by private enforcers motivated by profit?
It's not unique. The ADA and the NVRA are two other big laws that include private rights of action, eg
That's an interesting behind the scenes point of view. But from a consumer point of view:
> you don't notice all the products that don't have the label
...because there are too many with it, so people stopped caring. As a consumer, I would prefer a label that identified the major risks.
Does certified organic protect against lead?
Great read, thanks for the info. These things really are complex and worth withholding judgment until we really have a grasp of the specifics. This may have changed my mind about it.
One thing I wonder about with various regs is whether the optics are ever fully factored into the analysis. This seems to be a blind spot in a lot of regulatory behavior that affects consumers, GDPR being another obvious example. To consumers, these laws are examples of regulatory cluelessness, being so broadly applied as to be meaningless, and ultimately undermining the moral authority of the act of regulation. Who doesn't look at a Prop 65 warning and ultimately conclude 'well I guess everything causes cancer'?
Based on your description, Prop 65 did some nice jiu jitsu to navigate real-world constraints and create incentives to get some positive change in, and I imagine the author is proud of having figured out that kind of complex move. But man did it whiff on the optics.
Often times prop 65 is a lead issue. But perhaps most often it means that the company doesn't want to bother testing for lead rather than that the item definitely has lead.
With all things, be strategic- the importance of avoiding prop 65 is relative to the likelihood of it ending up in the body- so items in your kitchen, your garden, that young children would touch.
It's extremely rare that I come across products with a prop 65 warning. And in the rare chance you do see it, like on a bowl, you might learn that some bowl paints and glazes actually have lead in them!
Second, information is not meant to be executed on directly... you are supposed to process information with critical thinking. Yes, enclosed parking lots give you cancer. Guess what, you can still park in it... In the same way that tuna contains a lot of mercury but I still eat tuna.... just less of it. I rather know and make an informed decision than not know anything at all.
There can even be lead in fruit pouches: https://www.cdc.gov/lead-prevention/news/outbreak-applesauce...
I'm far from crunchy, but this led me to start making my kids pouches. They're more expensive per pouch, which was a bit surprising, but it has the side benefits that we make the pouches together (quality time) and I can control what goes in (e.g., spinach, carrots, broccoli).
I am glad you are finding the time to avoid contaminated industrial processed food.
In the apple sauce contaminations the apple sauce is always cinnamon flavored. When tested for various heavy metals, cinnamon usually has unsafe levels of heavy metal contamination, and lead is usually one of the metals: https://tamararubin.com/2024/12/six-cinnamon-products-chart/
There is widespread contamination in spices because the machinery that processes most spices is made of metal with lead. Some of the lead may be unintentional contamination, but lead is also used intentionally because it is cheap and useful. I believe it is useful for grinding, etc because when used in an alloy the metal doesn't wear down as easily.
So if you want to replicate those apple sauce products without heavy metal you would need to buy cinnamon sticks and grate them yourself.
I am a metal worker, and a foodie, living on a farm, and have experience and contacts in varios parts of the food industry, and have never come across lead, in any food relate items. As to alloying with lead, it has been used historicaly to make steal easier to machine "free machining steel" , but has no part in high strength or tool steels, and the steels used in grinding machines are going to be food grade..... even the grease in the bearings is food grade silcone grease....got some in the shop.... Good stainless wears for ever, so it is always used, at least here in Canada. So back to the lead and heavy metals, and how they are intentionaly added as "flavor enhansers" and coulorants, and basicaly how crazy people are and will do anything to steal a buck, but of course, not before passing it.right! personaly I eat only food, I make from individual single ingredients, prepared at home. The most complex food I buy is cheese, and very rarely icecream, thats it.And even then, there are things that just seem WRONG, like some grapes, that had an impossible "floral" aftertaste that lingered for hours......and now wont rot, sitting on top of the fridge. I could go on at some length, about all of the fraud in food, but Food is cheap, and there is no way to impliment a system with continious checks and investigations, that would guarantee quality and purity, without quardrupling the price, and perversly, increasing the incentive, to cheat.
Most of the cinnamon production is in "less developed" countries where the rules, standards, and available equipment for processing foodstuffs aren't the same level as in your Canada...
Sounds like those places aren't actually cheaper, and we're just "getting what we are paying for" in terms of lower quality for lower prices.
> So back to the lead and heavy metals, and how they are intentionaly added as "flavor enhansers"
Any source on this? Lead as flavor enhancer? That would be crazy if true.
So the lead in food comes from color and flavor additives. How did it get into those ingredients?
It's a deep dive, but an example or two might help, a great deal of food is processed and handled under purely industrial conditions, with all of it strored for some time, and shipped long distances, this causes oxidation and reduction of the most volitile and flavorfull/coulorfull components, which then must be protected or added back in when it is packaged for sale. Hence a vast industry devoted to flavorings, and coulorants, where many of these substances that were used are now banned, at least in a patch work fashion. Lead and other heavy metals are added to alter flavor and coulor, they are cheap and readily availible and also I suspect work as preservatives, allowing unscrupulous middlemen to by up large quantities of substandard product, and alter it enough to make it appear good enough for retailers to sell. Then there are agricultural areas that have been poluted by industry, mining, war, or naturaly, or even by past agricultural "mistakes", and again unscrupulous people can make large proffits by concealing the origin of what they are selling. So I buy spices as whole unground items, and choose carefully from small ethnic groceries, that cater to people keeping culinary traditions alive, and know by sight and smell the quality of what they are buying, and are often very hapoy to share there way of determining the good from the bad, and precisely, what to look for.
I wonder if RFK Jr. could improve food safety checks, especially when it seems something isn't right with a food that you bought.
There's a discount store that I will no longer feel comfortable buying cheese or produce from.
they're wildly thrashing about in the FDA https://apnews.com/article/fda-layoffs-trump-doge-rehired-me...
are there lead-free spice sources
How would you eliminate lead exposure by making your own pouches? Would you test the produce you use for led before using it?
I ask because there is no source that guarantees 100% that it won't have harmful lead levels. Lead is often introduced through the soil, so unless your organic farm where you buy produce either tested the soil ahead of time (pretty rare unless someone though it might be a concern) or regularly tests the produce they make, you're just assuming it won't have harmful lead levels.
Chocolate, spices, salt, and cassava products are particularly high in heavy metals.
I'm surprised to see salt on the list. Where does most table salt come from? And where in the processing does lead come in? Off the top of my head I think of it as a simple process. There aren't any special additives for flavor, color, or shelf life, as it's not attacked by bacteria. I believe the only thing added is iodine. And speaking as a non-chemist, it would seem straightforward to separate salt from lead if the salt was contaminated.
If somebody who actually knew what they're talking about could chime in, I'd be interested.
Most salt is precipitated from natural brine. Virtually all salt is “sea salt” including mined salt, the main difference is how much time has passed since it was precipitated from a sea of some sort. That brine contains small quantities of many metals and minerals that were in solution when the brine evaporated. Several heavy metals have significant solubility in naturally occurring brines so it isn’t surprising to find them there, but the quantity depends on the local geology and geochemistry. They won’t be evenly distributed even within a single formation due to different minerals having different thresholds for precipitation.
Natural salt is therefore not particularly pure. I believe it is typically on the order of 95-98% pure. The majority of contaminants are harmless things like potassium, magnesium, calcium, etc but there will also be traces of heavy metals, arsenic, etc.
Salt is literally one of the very cheapest bulk materials on Earth. Any non-trivial processing is going to be really expensive compared to the raw materials so people don’t do it unless they can’t avoid it (e.g. anti-caking agent for some food salt applications). As a consequence, I would expect most bulk food salt to have limited opportunity for industrial contamination.
I’ve read that cocoa processing involves drying the pods in the open air. Heavy metals in dust from nearby mines covers the surface of the pods, which are later ground up along with the cocoa.
The solution here seems simple enough: Don’t dry the pods in the open air. But the farmers don’t have a lot of extra money lying around that they can use to address this, and the market is (currently at least) still buying.
Oof. Folks had this same sort of outlook on lead contamination here in Missouri. Here's the problem: the farmers also live downwind of the lead pollution. They didn't poison the air. But now they're being expected to handle it.
My assumption is that it has something to do with machinery processing.
One other thing you can do - live in a newly developed area. Areas that had car traffic when lead was still used in fuel can have significant amounts of lead in the soil. If you live in an older area and suspect lead poisoning, test your garden soil and test the playground dust.
> stop buying things that have a prop 65 warning (I know prop 65 isn’t perfect, but it’s often a lead warning).
Note that:
* since 2018, the warning must include at least one specific chemical (but not all of them)
* unlike initially, manufacturers nowadays often only label products sent to California, so the benefit for residents of other states has largely disappeared
As a youngster in the 70s (before lead sas a known carcinogen) I had a piece of lead in my lego bag (no idea how it came to be there). I thought that soft metal was neat and bit it more than once. Fortunately I still have all my hair though I know a woman who would say 'that explains a lot.
> test children’s lead levels and your own
Here's a tip for your peace of mind: if you suspect that some food you're consuming is high in lead, get tested first before removing that food from your diet. I was consuming a fair amount of dark chocolate when I first learned that it could contain high levels of lead, so I got tested before I cut it out of my diet. My levels were below the detection limit so I can be reasonably sure that any damage caused by lead consumption was minimal.
I've heard that cilantro is a reasonably effective anti-chelating agent. The jury's out on whether it helps with lead that's already made it to the brain, but there's some evidence showing it's generally helpful with mitigating the side effects of heavy metal exposure.
What was the source of your "toddler's" hi lead levels?
Unfortunately I don't know. We have gotten rid of a lot of old toys and made sure our kitchen and plates are lead free and did some of that before a retest and that may have helped some. We are going to retest now that he is older and not sticking random stuff in his mouth much. He still eats a lot of sweet potatoes and I suspect that could be a source. I also just got some of the new easy to use lead testing kits and am starting to test some things with that but everything seems to come up negative so far.
Can you share where to get the easy to use lead tests?