New reporting from Bloomberg shows that many baby food brands contain dangerous levels of heavy metals.
Bloomberg tested 33 different baby food products and all but one contained at least two of three heavy metals: lead, arsenic and cadmium. The Food and Drug Administration is aware of the problem, but has only issued guidelines around juices and apparently has no plans to set enforceable limits for heavy metals in baby foods until at least next year.
Gary Harki, an investigative editor for the news outlet, told KMOX that they learned about the presence of heavy metals while following up on a study from 2019. The heavy metals, he explained, are mostly naturally occurring.
“Metals have been released into our environment through industrialization, is a lot of it,” he said. “And so industrial processes release these things into the air, they drop into the soil. And then when you're growing crops, they get absorbed into the crops through your groundwater.”
Harki says there are ways to help mitigate the risk heavy metals pose for families with young children. One way is to make sure they’re not eating the same things all the time.
“Variety helps eliminate concentrations of metals in the blood. So particular products to be of concern are sweet potatoes and again, rice — anything with rice in it is something you want to switch out,” he said. “Say, cold cucumbers are something for teething biscuits and things like that, that help eliminate some of that better absorption of arsenic and lead and cadmium through rice products.”
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