A congressional investigation determined that four leading baby food manufacturers knowingly sold products that contained high levels of toxic metals.
According to CNN, Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the chair of the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, which conducted the investigation, said, “Dangerous levels of toxic metals like arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury exist in baby foods at levels that exceed what experts and governing bodies say are permissible.”
Krishnamoorthi explained that the food manufacturers’ spreadsheets are “shocking” because they show evidence that some baby foods contain hundreds of parts per billion of dangerous metals. “Yet we know that in a lot of cases, we should not have anything more than single-digit parts per billion of any of these metals in any of our foods,” he told CNN.
World Health Organization listed arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury as some of the top 10 chemicals of concern for infants and children.
The US Food and Drug Administration has not yet set any standard minimum levels for heavy metals in most infant food. The agency set a standard of 100 parts per billion inorganic arsenic for infant rice cereal. Still, critics have said that this level should be considered way too high for a baby’s safety.
Testing done by Gerber; Beech-Nut Nutrition Company; Nurture, Inc., which also sells Happy Baby products; and Hain Celestial Group, Inc., which sells Earth’s Best Organic baby food, showed products contained levels of heavy metals far above limits set by the FDA for bottled water, the congressional investigators found.
