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Watchdog Report Finds Alarming 20 Percent of Baby Food Tested Contains Lead (arstechnica.com)
According to an analysis released Thursday by the nonprofit advocacy group, the Environmental Defense Fund, twenty percent of 2,164 baby foods sampled between 2003 and 2013 by the Food and Drug Administration tested positive for lead. Ars Technica reports: Lead is a neurotoxin. Exposure at a young age can permanently affect a developing brain, causing lifelong behavioral problems and lower IQ. Though the levels in the baby food were generally below what the FDA considers unsafe, the agency's standards are decades old. The latest research suggests that there is no safe level of lead for children. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency this year has estimated that more than five percent of U.S. children (more than a million) get more than the FDA's recommended limit of lead from their diet. The products most often found to contain lead were fruit juices, root vegetable-based foods, and certain cookies, such as teething biscuits, the EDF reports. Oddly, the presence of lead was more common in baby foods than in the same foods marketed for adults. For instance, only 25 percent of regular apple juice tested positive for lead, while 55 percent of apple juices marketed for babies contained lead. Overall, only 14 percent of adult foods tested contained lead. The findings come from data collected in the FDA's annual survey of foods, called the Total Diet Survey, which the agency has run since the 1970s. Each year, the agency samples 280 types of foods from three different cities across the country, tracking nutrients, metals, pesticides, and other contaminants.
Makes sense. It's in our water supply after all. That said, I'm not expecting the Trump administration to take action on this. And I sure as hell don't expect Congress too. Man, a functioning government sure would be nice right about now...
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Thank goodness we have a president who's eager to reduce regulations on businesses!
Is it just coincidence that the highest concentrations of lead are found in brands marketed to afro-americans? Is the food industry trying to cause Negro retardation?
After all, Obama was the savior for all the precious snowflakes so he should have fixed this.
to keep their constituents 'managable'.
If Americans in the past generation or two had full cognitive abilities, do you really think either major party would not have been relegated to minority status years or decades ago?
captcha was 'undoes'. ex: 'Lead undoes the intellectualism upon which the United States was supposedly but not really founded.'
Your child will have an underdeveloped brain because human beings need to eat meat and animal proteins during certain phase of brain development. Why do you think so many millennials have psychological problems?
Nothing wrong with eating less processed foods but please stop raising a pussy.
Just the kind of bullshit that you'd expect from evil China. There is literally poison in the baby food.
This story should not be on Slashdot. It isn't "news for nerds".
Just the kind of bullshit that you'd expect from evil China. There is literally poison in the baby food.
I don't think the Chinese are actually evil, that would be giving them more credit than they deserve.
However I strongly believe that some Chinese simply do not care about things that most of the people in the western world would simply know are WRONG.
Remember the melamine in the pet food ? The drywall made from toxic waste ?
When I see "made in China" on something, I don't buy it if possible. I understand that some stuff made in China is well made, but the alarming willingness of some Chinese to ignore ethical or moral considerations causes me to avoid spending my money on Chinese products more often than not.
I buy a lesser known brand from China, 'Lead Baby Heavy Metal Leaded Baby Food', which contains absolutely no lead.
Only 20%, what the hell?? I think we should demand that the number got a lot closer to 100% right away.
This is how big business screws you over by leaving out important stuff.
I'll bet they do like the do with dog food and have replaced the lead with sawdust.
The rich get richer.
I said Congress & Trump. I don't care who's in charge. Neither party is doing much of anything. But if you're gonna bring up parties I'll remind you that the Rs pretty much own State legislatures. And while I'm on the subject Clinton the Bill was basically an R with a D next to his name. That's how he formed the coalition that got him elected. Moderately left wing on social issues and hard right on anything economic. And make no mistake, clean water is very much an economic issue. He can bet you're ass Trump's kids don't eat baby food with lead in it. Not at his income bracket.
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The dolphin food I buy for my dolphin is now 100% baby free.
Soylent green and used condoms.
It's 100% discarded clits from female genital mutilations. Mmmmmm!
Sorry, that's simply not true. The FDA even states "vegetarian and vegan diets are suitable for all stages of child development".
The same FDA that warned you against eating eggs.... because the sugar industry was paying them off? Fine, raise a retarded baby if you want, just don't complain when it asks for a sex change operation.
We've seen this sort of article before:
- Say a bunch of stuff "tested positive" for BAD THING.
- Talk about how bad BAD THING is.
- Talk about where the government sets the (generally very bureaucrat-CYA-low) cutoff of what they consider dangerous (or actionable).
- But never mention the level of BAD THING detected, or where it lies on the government's scale of "Oh HORRORS!" vs. "Meh. There's a trace of BAD THING everywhere." scale.
- Foam up a nice head of panic.
- Sell a lot of papers/eyeball views/whatever if you're a media outlet. Get a bunch more donations for your "good work" to fight poisoning people with BAD THING if you're an advocacy group (as in this case).
- PROFIT!
"Tested Positive" says there's enough to detect. As the tests get better the level of detectability gets vanishingly small. This not only gives more opportunities to pull this stunt as time goes on, but it also enables the use of an apples-orange comparison with the less sensitive tests of the past to make up a fake-news item about how "this many decades ago only THIS LOWER PERCENTAGE of things tested for BAD THING tested positive."
I looked through the whole article for any statement of what level of lead was detected, but didn't find it. Did I miss something? Or was this yet another bogus scare story by an organization with an axe to grind (and/or being removed from the government funding teat and trying to fill in with extra donations).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How does this crap get modded up in a tech forum?
There's no insight, no tech content, no explanation - just a childish swipe at the elected president.
And to top it off, anyone with half a brain or more would immediately recognize that the times cited in the OP were years before Trump, and mostly during Obama... so that the post casts aspersions on Obama more than Trump.
We're supposed to be the smart people in the room. One side just got done ginning up a sniper to take out the other side - do we really have to stand for this nonsense?
This forum depends on our participation. Can't we just take back control and refuse to mod up this sort of crap?
Kid should be allowed to hunt, even if you don't allow him to eat his kill. As a parent you should help him when he's young, break the rabbit's leg...
You wouldn't deny hunting to your cat, kids are the same. They 'pack up' naturally and group hunt by instinct.
"Mister! What's this lead doing in my baby's food?"
"Shhh, keep it down, or everybody will want some lead too!"
Where does the lead comes from?
Consumer Reports tested some brands in 2011 for arsenic and lead:
https://www.consumerreports.org/content/dam/cro/magazine-articles/2012/January/Consumer%20Reports%20Arsenic%20Test%20Results%20January%202012.pdf
Having poor education isn't enough, we need to suppress the intelligence of children too (to continually increase social inequality).
Does this explain it?
Seriously? I thought we switched over to unleaded baby food way back in the late 70's or something?
You misread the article. It says no level of lead in the *bloodstream* is unsafe. Just because lead is detected in something does not mean it is bio-available for absorption. Lead paint, for instance, does not absorb easily into the blood stream from the digestive tract. Kids who had high levels of lead in their blood from old houses with lead paint were getting most of it from breathing in paint dust, not eating it as many believe.
The OP is correct - the level makes a huge difference. If it's very low, like 1PPM, even assuming perfect absorption, you'd have to eat hundreds of gallons of the stuff for it to build up to harmful levels in the bloodstream.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
First, it's The Environmental Defense Fund, so basically there's no credibility to this because it's from a very biased extreme activist group. It's on par with a shrill the-sky-is-falling warning on the need for more defense spending...pushed by Locheed's Skunk Works (i.e. a very biases and self-interested source).
Second, lead is a perfectly natural substance that can be DETECTED at some level nearly everywhere on the planet. The real questions on things like lead and arsenic are the LEVELS and whether they are artificially high or unnaturally dangerous. If we are to panic simply because we can DETECT traces with our ever improving instruments, then we must immediately wage war on apples (which all contain traces of arsenic)
These stories are designed to agitate ignorant and panicky soccer moms.
Most of us aren't furfags.
Good thing they had the word "alarming" right there! I was leaning toward "fantastic", myself. Cut the bullshit, guys.
0% lead, 0 is a percentage
Come on guys, the Environmental Defense Fund? The guys who are liars for a living? Who have paid out millions in settlements for faking results before. I would wait for confirmation from someone with less monetary interest in the results. And I would take "estimates" from the EPA with a similar grain of (non-leaded) salt. We know the agenda they are pushing, and how little items like the truth do little to stop their quest for more regulations. (They applied for exemption from the Trump change to no longer submit Y2K risk documents ferchrissake!)
I think the lead got to this one.
Hahahaha, I've been saying it all along. USA really is going the way of ancient Rome. Putting lead in everything until everyone goes crazy and starts killing each other. Motherfucking dumbasses on a completely epic scale. Ha!
At least now we know how Trump got elected...
Vegetarian I can see, but vegan is just nuts. If a baby cannot handle milk you do the best you can, but trying to raise a baby without milk otherwise, while possible, is just stupid.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
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Sorry, that's simply not true. The FDA even states "vegetarian and vegan diets are suitable for all stages of child development".
The FDA also said that eating fat makes you fat (it doesn't) and that you should subsist on mostly carbs (you shouldn't). If you believe anything the FDA tells you simply because the FDA told you, you are an epic dumbshit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The whole uoint being, why does baby food contain *more* lead than adult food?Particularly considering how babies are the most vulnerable to its neurotoxic effects.
Brave new world? ;) To be fair I survived radiation poisoning when I was 5. Not that it is an excuse for this shit.
Which is irrelevant because lead is a naturally occurring substance present everywhere in the environment. You literally cannot go anywhere or do anything which does not expose you to lead. So it's pointless trying to avoid exposure to "ANY level of lead."
It's the higher concentrations of lead which you have to worry about. So OP is correct that without knowing how much lead was found, it's pointless.
Just as a guess, I'd say because baby food is finely minced into a gruel, any contamination is spread throughout the product instead of just sitting on the surface where it can be easily washed off (with purified water with a lower lead concentration than storage, processing, and transport environments). Similar to why ground beef is more prone to salmonella contamination than steak - grinding it spreads the bacteria from just the surface where it can be easily washed off or killed by cooking, to throughout the entire volume of meat.
Cook the food yourself and use all organic and non-GMO ingredients. It's more effort but it will actually cost less than pre-packaged food and will be much healthier. We're raising our child vegan and I think everyone should at least consider this too.
We tried this with our kitten. It didn't turn out well.
Lead affects brain development negatively. If lead gets banned from baby food, where would future presidents, politicians, and military leaders come from?
"Overall, only 14 percent of adult foods tested contained lead." That's not exactly a situation in which I would use the word "only".
Nothing wrong with eating less processed foods but please stop raising a pussy.
Fewer. Or singularize "foods".
its trump's fault you were born also, when he nutted unadulterated deep inside your slut mother
fagot
..is lego, snot and glow in the dark sweets.
The FACT that there is lead in the food is proof of gross negligence or malice. The management of those companies should be thrown in jail or better yet, do what the Chinese government does and execute them.
There is absolutely no excuse for what they did.
Why do people buy pre-packaged baby food?
1. Buy fresh veggies at the supermarket
2. Wash them
3. Stick them in a blender
4. Serve them to baby
5. Profit!
No need for the "???".
We find more things that contain lead.
This one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkR2XEYEFgk
Personally, I always laugh at the "natural" label... but the sort of people who write articles like the one that started this thread tend to fixate on the term. It is in this spirit that I deployed the term: while I personally think of lead, arsenic,mercury, and uranium as "natural" the people who get worked up about traces of lead are the sort who shop at Whole Foods, want dye-free this, glutn-free that, and worry excessively about plastics.
The simple truth is that nearly everything can be linked to a cause of death,and in isolation, could become the subject of a campaign to limit or eliminate it. In context, however, we are all WAY better off WITH the stuff than our distant ancestorswere without it. The man who dies at agde 90 from cancer linked to plastics is better off than his ancestor who died from contaminated surgical instruments because no disposable plastic ones existed. Similarly, the guy a century ago at age 60 from issues related to drinking water from lead pipes and getting toothpaste from a lead foil tube was better off than his ancestor who died at age 35 from gum disease and bacteria in the water he stoed in barrels because he had no pipes bringing him fresh clean water.
Perspective, particularly historical perspective, is always a good thing, as is a sense of proportion and an understanding of the concept of relative risk.
Except it doesn't say that? https://health.gov/dietaryguid...
Human breast milk is vegan, because the provider can consent. A cow can never consent, thus cow milk can never be vegan.
While I don't see that consent has anything to do with it, I see there are vegans who worry about consent. Still, what's so special about humans? Can a bonobo consent? Why or why not?
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Wait, does that mean that cannibalism is vegan as long as the meal is provided willingly?
Is there a correlation with country of origin? Is the manufacture of baby food one of the things we've outsourced to China, for instance?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The FDA also said that
Except it doesn't say that?
Congratulations, son, you just failed reading comprehension. You're going to need to learn to pay attention to tenses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but be damned sure I'm wrong, first.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Now that lead-poisoned generation can be again easily manipulated at election times again! ;-)
Sounds like a R plan to me!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Interesting article, and the accompanying documentation tells an interesting tale.
First, the method used for analysis is graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy. This is a method I used for over a decade and can safely say that in complex sample matrices it is very easy to have matrix interferences cause false readings, even when using background correction such as Zeeman effect. Use of a modern technique such as ICP-mass spectrometry would be far more accurate.
There is no mention of QA used to ensure good data such as sample spiking or standard additions. The quantity of samples per analyze is too small to be representative, and the reference for the analysis method does not tie back readily to a published analytical method.
Finally, if the data is defensible, there should be no reason why the raw results weren't published (including instrument conditions and sample peak data).
Too many people put blind faith in data from one lab without having it reviewed by competent auditors. This should be independently audited to ensure proper methodology was used and that the results are truly representative of the products being tested.
The FACT that there is lead in the food is proof of gross negligence or malice.
All food contains lead. The question is how much and what level is safe.