New report finds toxic heavy metals in popular baby foods. FDA failed to warn consumers of risk

[Wicked Blue]

Washington Post
By Laura Reiley
Feb. 4, 2021 at 8:41 a.m. EST


A congressional report found many of the products made by the country’s largest commercial baby food manufacturers contain significant levels of toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury, which can endanger infant neurological development.

The report released Thursday from the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on economic and consumer policy found heavy metals in rice cereals, sweet potato puree, juices and sweet snack puffs made by some of the most trusted names in baby food.

Gerber, Beech-Nut, HappyBABY (made by Nurture) and Earth’s Best Organic baby foods (made by Hain Celestial Group) complied with the committee’s request to submit internal testing documents.

Campbell Soup, which sells Plum Organics baby foods, Walmart (its private brand is Parent’s Choice) and Sprout Foods declined to cooperate, according to members of the subcommittee.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/04/toxic-metals-baby-food/

[Wounded Bear]

1. Well, this sucks...nt

[Irish_Dem]

2. Why are all these companies making poisoned baby food?

Most of them have been making baby food for a long time.
They know better.

Is it really cheaper for them to make toxic baby food?

No wonder the incidence of autism and other neurological problems have marked increased in the last three decades.
And I think there is an overall decline in US IQ scores.

[Wicked Blue]

4. I too suspect this may be contributing to neurological problems.

Even plain old ordinary rice has to be washed before cooking because of contamination with heavy metals including arsenic.

[Irish_Dem]

6. That is my theory, we don't have clean food, air or water.

So children are experiencing much more neurological diseases than 40 yrs ago.

[Mike 03]

3. Depressing. Imagine being a parent and trying to do everything right, give your

infant an edge by doing some of the creative things recommended by scientists and psychologists, and having your efforts sabotaged by something so basic as contaminants in the food (or the air that they breathe, the lead in the water, etc.).

Not to get too far off on an tangent, but when we look around our country and see a large number of Americans falling for such ridiculous lies, believing absurd things, impervious to fact, unable or unwilling to read books and newspapers, it's hard not to wonder if there are things besides the Autocrat Playbook at work here. Trump: "I love the poorly-educated." He was really saying, "I want stupid people because they are so easy to fool." Why are there so many of them?

[Irish_Dem]

7. The GOP refuses to do anything about the poisoning of the populace as it serves their purposes.

I do not think I am too far afield with this as evidenced by their indifference to over 400,000 Covid deaths.
It served their purposes to let them die vs doing anything constructive.

I don't think you are on a tangent. I have thought the same thing myself.
That is also why the cost of a college education is prohibitive for many.

[Mosby]

5. Ceo of family organics

...the data points include two outliers of high lead results, not replicable in our testing, but which we included for completeness and transparency. We hope that the report — which we have not seen — and those sharing the information would not insinuate to the public that there is a danger present.”

[NNadir]

8. It is possible to detect these elements in parts per trillion...

...using ICP/MS.

It's not entirely clear what "significant levels" means. Does it mean detectable or does mean "of physiological concern?"

My standard joke is that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course.

[Mosby]

9. Arsenic is in all plants.

Baby food companies try to remove it and heavy metals that are naturally occurring.

https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/arsenic-food-faq

[NNadir]

14. This is precisely what I expect is the case.

Many phosphate fertilizers contain (gasp) uranium.

Cadmium is associated which much of the rice in southern China, in part from mining, but also because of the element's natural presence in soil.

[Mosby]

15. Interestingly there is more arsenic in brown rice than white rice

Because most of it is stored in the germ, which is removed to make white rice.

[NNadir]

18. The most serious case of arsenic poisoning in the world is Bangladesh.

The destruction of the Ganges water flows, the pollution of the river, and the damage to the Delta have forced Bengali farmers to rely on groundwater to grow rice. The groundwater in the region percolates through arsenic deposited by the river over many millennia leached from arsenic ores in the Himalaya mountains.

From WHO:

Contamination of drinking-water by arsenic in Bangladesh: a public health emergency

From open sourced primary scientific literature: Arsenic contamination of Bangladesh aquifers exacerbated by clay layers (Mihajlov, I., Mozumder, M.R.H., Bostick, B.C. et al. Arsenic contamination of Bangladesh aquifers exacerbated by clay layers. Nat Commun 11, 2244 (2020).)

[Klaralven]

13. ICP-MS can detect 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000

ICP-MS – Heavy Metal Elemental Analysis

Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS) is capable of detecting metals at very low concentrations, as low as 1 ppq (one part per quadrillion). An ICP-MS unit ionizes the sample using inductively coupled plasma. Plasma in this case is created by heating argon gas to 10,000 °C causing the argon gas to increase in its electrical conductive properties and eventually transforming the argon from a gas state into the plasma state. Once ionized the molecules that make up the sample are separated based on it’s mass-to-charge ratio and quantified using a mass spectrometer.

There are a wide range of applications for ICP-MS, from geology to toxicology. In the pharmaceutical realm there are two general reasons for quantitating amounts of heavy metals, to identify contaminants and to perform bioanalysis on therapeutics designed to contain heavy metals.

https://pacificbiolabs.com/icp-ms-heavy-metal-elemental-analysis/

At those sensitivities, you can find heavy metals in almost anything. That's like detecting a milliliter of alcohol in lake 10 kilometers by 10 kilometers and 10 meters deep.

[ProfessorGAC]

17. Having Done This Technique...

...I would say one really repeatably quantitate much below 0.1ppt. Perhaps 80ppq.
But, the point everyone is making on this is spot on.
With this technology, we could find metal contaminants in nearly everything.
To link these incredibly tiny amounts to neurological issues seems quite the reach.

[jayfish]

10. I'm Convinced...

that some undiagnosed mass poisoning/contamination is responsible for where the electorate is today. Perhaps it's a remnant of our use of leaded gasoline. Maybe related to DDT (see Michigan). Perhaps it's this (OP) shite. people seem unusually illogical these days.

[Wicked Blue]

12. I think climate change is also affecting people more than we know

The Washington Post reported on two studies in 2019

Headline: Two new studies warn that a hotter world will be a more violent one

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/16/two-new-studies-warn-that-hotter-world-will-be-more-violent-one/

[phylny]

11. I made my kids' food 35 years ago.

Of course, our food has crap in it, too.

[ecstatic]

16. Might this explain the skyrocketing autism cases?

[uponit7771]

19. Didn't know this, looks like its up everywhere around the world (link)

not only in the U.S. but globally, says Maureen Durkin,

I do think its because of metals, it would make sense.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-real-reasons-autism-rates-are-up-in-the-u-s/#:~:text=The%20latest%20estimate%20of%20autism,the%20network%20site%20in%20Wisconsin.