Toxic Heavy Metals Contaminate US Commercial Baby Food - Congressional Report

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th February, 2021) Heavy metals including arsenic, led, cadmium and mercury found in brand-name US baby foods threaten American infants with neurological damage, including decreased intelligence, a House Oversight subcommittee report said on Monday.

"The Subcommittee's investigation revealed that manufacturers knowingly sell tainted baby food to unsuspecting parents, in spite of internal company test results showing high levels of toxic heavy metal, and without any warning labels whatsoever," House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy Chair Raja Krishnamoorthi said in a statement accompanying the report.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have declared the four common heavy metals, dangerous to human health, "particularly to babies and children, who are most vulnerable to their neurotoxic effects. Even low levels of exposure can cause serious and often irreversible damage to brain development," the report said.

The subcommittee based its report on internal documents from four of the seven biggest US baby food manufacturers - Nurture, Beech-Nut, Hain, and Gerber - which voluntarily submitted data in response to a subcommittee request that was prompted by reports of contamination that surfaced late last year. Walmart, Campbell, and Sprout Organic Foods declined to cooperate with the investigation, the report said.

As a baseline, the report used heavy-metal concentration limits for bottled drinking water set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): 10 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic, 5 ppb for lead and cadmium and 2 ppb for mercury.

"Nurture (HappyBABY) sold baby foods after tests showed they contained as much as 180 parts per billion (ppb) inorganic arsenic [and] Hain (Earth's Best Organic) sold finished baby food products containing as much as 129 ppb inorganic arsenic," the report said.

The report was limited to measurements of baby food ingredients - not finished products on store shelves - for Beech-Nut and Gerber, presumably because companies are only required to test ingredients.

"Beech-Nut used ingredients after they tested as high as 913.4 ppb arsenic [and] Gerber used high-arsenic ingredients, using 67 batches of rice flour that had tested over 90 ppb inorganic arsenic," the report said.

The report contained similar data from the four companies for lead, arsenic and mercury from the four companies.

Recommendations in the report included requiring baby food manufacturers to test finished products and report heavy metal levels on food labels.