U.S. FDA Asked to Revise Lead Exposure Standards for Canned Foods

In late 2020, a group of environmental and health organizations formally petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to revise its standards for beverage and food exposure to lead. According to this group, the FDA should “stop allowing lead to be added to food contact materials, update its guidance to better protect against the risk of lead exposure, and adjust its limits for lead in bottled water.”

It is well known, according to different studies, that adults generally absorb 20% of the lead they ingest. Children, much more. “Ingestion of contaminated dust or contaminated food, water, or alcohol is the most common way lead enters the body” (Lead Poisoning in Humans. Pedro A Poma, ResearchGate, 2013). Thus, according to many more studies, it is children’s food that contains the most of this type of component.

In 2017, the FDA announced that it was evaluating the risks of lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in foods, cosmetics, and dietary supplements because of their presence in many of the foods we eat and “because these substances may be especially harmful to children’s neurological development.” As part of this effort, the agency recognized that it is inevitable that some of these compounds, such as lead, will be present in food; however, “it is a public health priority to reduce their concentration in food to the extent possible,” the group’s document notes.

This FDA study detected lead in 98% of certain canned fruits compared to only 3% in fresh or frozen varieties, pointing to the canning process as the source of the heavy metal. The same FDA reported finding lead in almost half of all the canned foods it tested.

Given these results, the FDA, according to this group, has not changed its standards, so they request:

• Ban lead in food cans.
• Reduce the amount of lead allowed in bottled water from 5 parts per thousand to 1 part per thousand.
• Prohibit the addition of lead to brass or bronze used in water dispensing equipment or tea and coffee brewing equipment, as there is ample evidence, according to studies, that lead leaches into beverages.

As the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) explains in an article published about the FDA report and the organizations’ petition, it is important to note that lead can harm a child’s brain development, “resulting in learning and behavioral problems, and can cause heart disease in adults.

While levels in any one food may be low, the cumulative effect of lead – and other heavy metals – in the diet can be significant. In addition, he notes, it has been found that, for more than 70% of children in the United States, the dominant source of lead exposure is food.

While soil and water contamination is a major source, lead can also enter food through processing and contact with materials containing the heavy metal, according to the EDF.