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.

Comments

Well crap

[rsilvergun]

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...

Re:Well crap

[MillionthMonkey]

There was lead in the food on December 31, 2010, also. That was the last time you had a fully Democratic controlled government. You'll have to come up with another lame excuse now.

Um, it would help if you RTFA:

That said, the FDA's food standards were set in 1993. Those standards suggest that children get no more than six micrograms of lead per day, based on children having no more than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. However, a 2012 NIH study found evidence that levels less than 5 micrograms per dL "decreased academic achievement, IQ, and specific cognitive measures; increased incidence of attention-related behaviors and problem behaviors." The EDF reported that the CDC is expected to lower its recommended blood levels to no more than 3.5 micrograms per DL in 2017.

The toxicity of lead was not fully understood even just several years ago. It was only recognized after Republicans took control of Congress. However Obama did sign a food-safety bill on January 4, 2011, just five days after the fully Deomocratic controlled government ended. Luckily, it had overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate just in time, on December 21, 2010.

But since Obama signed it, it's bad and so Trump needs to undo it. This is a statement his campaign released on September 15, 2016:

Specific regulations to be eliminated include:

[...paragraphs ranting about EPA controls on CO2, water, and ozone pollution deleted...]

The FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food. The rules govern the soil farmers use, food and food production hygiene, food packaging, food temperatures, and even what animals may roam which fields and when. It also greatly increased inspections of food "facilities", and levies new taxes to pay for this inspection overkill.

It seems poisoned dog food isn't even popular among Trump supporters, so the "FDA Food Police" paragraph silently disappeared from Trump's campaign website. However there are still calls from some within the GOP (e.g. Newt Gingrich) to abolish the FDA altogether.

I'm not sure what will become of the CDC plans to lower the acceptable level in 2017. Trump's hiring freeze has left 700 vacancies at the CDC and his proposed budget cuts their funding by 17%.

Re:Well crap

[ShanghaiBill]

I mean, you really shouldn't be feeding your baby processed food to begin with.

"Baby food" started out as an American thing, promoted by corporate marketing and TV advertising. It has been pushed into some other countries, but in most of the world, once kids are weaned they just eat mashed up adult food. "Baby food" is overpriced and over processed crap, that is best avoided.

Re:Well crap

[djinn6]

Let's say both you and I run rating agencies. Yours does everything properly, testing often and rating them honestly, and mine barely tests anything at all and just hands out 4 or 5 stars to whoever paid me. Guess what? My agency will make all the money because the businesses love me. I mean, who doesn't like a 5 star rating?

Oh and consumers? A few well-produced ads takes care of them. Do you really think any of them will ever figure out how much testing I do? The ad says I test more than you and that's all they'll ever know. In a few years, yours will be insolvent and be sold at a massive discount and I'll be the only game in town.

Here's the undeniable truth: if rating agencies actually worked, food safety laws would've never have existed in the first place.

Re: Well crap

[Hognoxious]

because it's fucking illegal already.

RTFA. Levels are within current limits. The question is whether the limits are low enough.

Re: Well crap

[Hognoxious]

Witness: At the time of manufacture we tested it. It contained absolutely zero percent lead.

Attorney: So how do you account for the fact that when tested at the supermarket it had a detectable lead content?

Witness: It must have formed from the Polonium.

Judge: Case dismissed!

Did I stutter and have it come out like an "R"?

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:Why didn't Obama fix this ?

[liquid_schwartz]

I know that you're being snarky, but you have reason to be. The Obama administration changed the rules to allow importing of food *without* labeling country of origin. Want some leaded pre-cooked chicken nuggets from China? Well step right up.

People need to stop bickering over D and R as if either mattered. Both will sell you down the river, they just use different excuses as to why.

Citation:https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancyhuehnergarth/2016/03/07/chicken-raised-and-slaughtered-in-china-moves-one-step-closer-to-your-dinner-plate/#498614f1167a

But how MUCH lead?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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).

Re:But how MUCH lead?

[Namarrgon]

Maybe you missed the part of the article citing research that showed ANY level of lead was unsafe.

The whole point being, why does baby food contain *more* lead than adult food?Particularly considering how babies are the most vulnerable to its neurotoxic effects.

Re:But how MUCH lead?

[ScienceBard]

Yeah the referenced article at a glance gave a detection rate, not a level for most of the claims. As someone that deals with minimal detectable concentrations for a living, it looks like they were dancing right at their detection limit. Which is fine, as long as you don't misconstrue what those numbers mean.

It does read very much like an advocacy piece though, particularly where it goes on to criticize the government for regulating concentrations based on what is achievable versus what is the minimum absolute safe quantity. Basically up in arms that there isn't a total ban on lead in food. Which shows a pretty startling lack of understanding of the biosphere and why regulations are structured that way.

First, I'll preface with this: my lab mostly monitors for radioisotopes like cesium, but the game is pretty much the same. Certain plants preferentially scavenge heavy metals; its a sort of natural confusion in their biochemistry. They're looking for things they need to grow, like iron. They really aren't that selective, because most of the heavy stuff in the soil will be things they need to grow, so there isn't really active filtration of "bad stuff" from a human perspective. The plant doesn't care. As a rule of thumb, anything that sets down large deep roots is a good candidate for this (root vegetables, trees, etc.). Grasses tend not to, although it varies a lot based on the type of grass. Water based plants are another exception (like rice), as heavy metals tend to wash into water basins and settle into silt.

Where I see this manifest most is oak trees in my line of work. There are large oak forests on the eastern seaboard of the US that had decent quantities of radio cesium dropped on them from weapons testing. The oak trees suck that metal into their leaves like a sponge, then at the end of the year the leaves fall off and rot into the topsoil, and the metal is captured again the next year. It never settles out and gets buried due to this re-suspension, and so oak leaves are some of the most radioactive things you'll find in the USA (depending on where you live).

In this food study, you're seeing a lot of that. Root vegetables aren't going to be just high in lead, they'll be full of all kinds of stuff. The fruit is going to vary by type, but they'll all have some as well. Purely non-rice grains should have comparatively little, due to shallow root structures among other things (the metal naturally will work its way down out of the topsoil in many cases, so the shallower you set your root the less of it you'll see from a plant perspective). It will also vary based on the year: plants set deeper more extensive root systems based on temperature and rainfall, so the same species in a cool drought year might have a radically different concentration of metals from the same species in the same location in a wet warm year.

Anyway, the reality is we pumped large quantities of this shit into our environment for decades. Lead mostly from gas, other metals from chemical refining, etc. Lead is the big one, as it was so ubiquitous. There really is no escaping it, and that's why the regulatory limits are set as they are. You can't expect there to be non of it, and it's extraordinarily difficult and fickle to try and control given how incredibly variable the factors can be. Take wheat. You can't test every truckload of wheat for metal content, it isn't feasible given the analyses and timescales involved. When you test off a wheat barge going to a cereal plant, you're looking at an aggregate sample from an entire region. Some fields in that region may have little to no metals, some may have a ton, and in reality most probably have trace amounts. You can't filter the metals out, the product you would have left wouldn't be food in the classical sense. So... you live with it. You set a limit you think can be achieved on average, and test out the back end (the food product itself). The food producer can test the raw ingredients themselves for protection, can try to structur

Yes, Well crap

[Okian Warrior]

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?

Re:Yes, Well crap

[ShanghaiBill]

How does this crap get modded up in a tech forum?

The article itself is garbage. It contains no useful information whatsoever, other that that lead is "detectable". Well, no shit. Lead is detectable in seawater, and even in the atmosphere. The only curious fact is that there were actual a few samples that did NOT detect lead. The only plausible explanation for that is that they were using crappy instruments.

If TFA had been written by a non-idiot, it would have listed the actual levels and compared them to safety standards, or at least normal background levels. But then it would have been obvious that there was actually no "news" worth reporting.

Re:Yes, Well crap

[Namarrgon]

Non-idiots would have simply checked the cited source, where all the numbers you're looking for are clearly displayed, before declaring it not worth reporting.

If you had, you'd see the 1993 FDA lead limit was no more than 6 micrograms/day for young children - and that e.g. baby rice cereal was found to contain up to 82 parts per billion. Which means that feeding your baby 100g of that cereal would already exceed the daily limit by 37%, without including other sources.

And again, you missed the whole point of the article, which was asking why baby food has more detectable lead in it than similar adult foods, especially as babies are so much more sensitive to its toxic effects.

Re:Yes, Well crap

[LostMyBeaver]

I'm not sure I agree with you regarding whether we're supposed to be the smart people in the room.

I tend to spend that majority of my time on Slashdot with hopes for an interesting science or engineering article that makes it worth my while to read the comments.As that doesn't happen nearly as often as it should, I'm not willing to give up and I spend the rest of my time here reading comments to see if there's someone I can contradict instead of simply doing something useful with my life.

It is very likely that many people on Slashdot are genuinely smart people... when speaking in terms of engineering knowledge. It's possible they are also skilled at historical knowledge. But it generally strikes me that most of us are relatively clueless when considering topics outside of our scopes of expertise... like politics and law. Though, it seems that every single post on Slashdot will have at least a few gripes about the elected administration. And given the diversity of the audience on Slashdot, I believe all political beliefs are fairly well represented... and noisy it seems.

Over the years, I believe that Slashdot has helped me greatly to understand politics better as well. I now truly understand the two party system. I also understand why people argue over who is president. It's unintentionally orchestrated. I don't believe there's a mastermind or two behind it. I believe that people are so well programmed that we feel the need to join teams.

- Liverpool vs. Chelsey
- Mets vs. Yankees
- Red vs. Black
- Black vs. White
- America vs. (whoever is convenient at this time)
- America vs. everyone else just because we have to be better because we are Americans... so let's just piss on everyone
- Libtards vs. Right wing nut jobs.
- Jews vs. Muslims
- Christians vs Christians

Consider the approach of how sports teams work. It doesn't matter what sports team you support, there are rarely players on that team which are from the regions which their teams represent. Instead, some team owner (also unlikely from the area) will put a great deal of effort into recruiting talent from wherever they can for however much money they can. When the team is assembled, a group of people will get together and try and teach them to play together and work as a group. Then, they will through a very organized system play a bunch of games with other teams and attempt to monetize their efforts through many different methods. The more successful teams can afford the better players or at least the more exciting players and can generate stir. That stir causes people to not just pay to watch these games, but also to invest in the purchase of licensed merchandise such as hats and t-shirts or oddly enough, towels... which are meant to wipe up spilled beer... which they'll wear as clothing... as if they were bar maids... from the age of 2 or 3.

What's the rationality of this working? In order for this to work, people have to be willing to pay to watch basically a bunch of kids play games, buy merchandise and more. But society has programmed us to believe we absolutely have to "be part of something more than ourselves". We have to be part of a team. As though the performance of these children in costumes playing with a ball will have some impact on our lives in a spiritually meaningful way.

Consider this. People may justify the behavior or watching sports because they like to see experts at work and see they greatest athletes of the world playing. And that makes sense. It's even sensible that a person could form something of an emotional attachment to a player because of many different reasons. I personally for example like the color green. There's no rational reason for it, I simply find it pleasing. What is completely illogical is that people believe it's important who wins.

That's the problem. It matters who won. Instead of simply enjoying the grace of a great athlete, it is really important that the individual

Re:Source of contamination

[drinkypoo]

Where does the lead comes from?

Probably in equipment used for processing. Baby food is more highly processed than most other kinds of food, and wet food is most likely to interact with the machinery. Lead is commonly added to alloys to make them easier to machine. That's why cut glass is typically leaded, as well; it's easier to cut without breaking.

Re:Levels

[Namarrgon]

If you'd read the rest of the article, you'd see that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends lead levels in drinking water be kept below 1 part per billion - a thousandth of the amount you're talking about, even with imperfect absorption. And if you followed up the article's sources, you'd see data showing that e.g. Walgreen's 100% Grape Juice was found to contain around 15 ppb. FDA levels for e.g. grape juice are currently 50 ppb, so it can legally contain far more than the AAP considers wise, which is why the article noted that the FDA is currently reviewing its 20 yo standards to account for more recent research.

But again, that's not the actual point of the article. To repeat; if we can keep lead below detectable levels in most adult foods, why are we not doing at least as much for the baby versions of those same foods?