The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week set maximum levels for lead in baby foods such as jarred fruits and vegetables, yogurts and dry cereal, part of an effort to cut young kids’ exposure to the toxic metal that causes developmental and neurological problems.
The agency issued final guidance that it estimated could reduce lead exposure from processed baby foods by about 20% to 30%. The limits are voluntary, not mandatory, for food manufacturers, but they allow the FDA to take enforcement action if foods exceed the levels.
It’s part of the FDA’s ongoing effort to “reduce dietary exposure to contaminants, including lead, in foods to as low as possible over time, while maintaining access to nutritious foods,” the agency said in a statement.
Consumer advocates, who have long sought limits on lead in children’s foods, welcomed the guidance first proposed two years ago, but said it didn’t go far enough.
“FDA’s actions today are a step forward and will help protect children,” said Thomas Galligan, a scientist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “However, the agency took too long to act and ignored important public input that could have strengthened these standards.”
The new limits on lead for children younger than 2 don’t cover grain-based snacks such as puffs and teething biscuits, which some research has shown contain higher levels of lead. And they don’t limit other metals such as cadmium that have been detected in baby foods.
The FDA’s announcement comes just one week after a new California law took effect that requires baby food makers selling products in California to provide a QR code on their packaging to take consumers to monthly test results for the presence in their product of four heavy metals: lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium.
The change, required under a law passed by the California Legislature in 2023, will affect consumers nationwide. Because companies are unlikely to create separate packaging for the California market, QR codes are likely to appear on products sold across the country, and consumers everywhere will be able to view the heavy metal concentrations.
Although companies are required to start printing new packaging and publishing test results of products manufactured beginning in January, it may take time for the products to hit grocery shelves.
The law was inspired by a 2021 congressional investigation that found dangerously high levels of heavy metals in packaged foods marketed for babies and toddlers. Baby foods and their ingredients had up to 91 times the arsenic level, up to 177 times the lead level, up to 69 times the cadmium level, and up to five times the mercury level that the U.S. allows to be present in bottled or drinking water, the investigation found.
There’s no safe level of lead exposure for children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The metal causes “well-documented health effects,” including brain and nervous system damage and slowed growth and development. However, lead occurs naturally in some foods and comes from pollutants in air, water and soil, which can make it impossible to eliminate entirely.
The FDA guidance sets a lead limit of 10 parts per billion for fruits, most vegetables, grain and meat mixtures, yogurts, custards and puddings and single-ingredient meats. It sets a limit of 20 parts per billion for single-ingredient root vegetables and for dry infant cereals. The guidance covers packaged processed foods sold in jars, pouches, tubs or boxes.
Jaclyn Bowen, executive director of the Clean Label Project, an organization that certifies baby foods as having low levels of toxic substances, said consumers can use the new FDA guidance in tandem with the new California law: The FDA, she said, has provided parents a “hard and fast number” to consider a benchmark when looking at the new monthly test results.
But Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for Consumer Reports, called the FDA limits “virtually meaningless because they’re based more on industry feasibility and not on what would best protect public health.” A product with a lead level of 10 parts per billion is “still too high for baby food. What we’ve heard from a lot of these manufacturers is they are testing well below that number.”
The new FDA guidance comes more than a year after lead-tainted pouches of apple cinnamon puree sickened more than 560 children in the U.S. between October 2023 and April 2024, according to the CDC.
The levels of lead detected in those products were more than 2,000 times higher than the FDA’s maximum. Officials stressed that the agency doesn’t need guidance to take action on foods that violate the law.
Aleccia writes for the Associated Press. Gold reports for The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.
