One third of cinnamon products tested by Consumer Reports contained elevated levels of lead, the watchdog agency warned Thursday.

The finding follows concerns about metals in foods after tainted cinnamon applesauce poisoned hundreds in 44 states last year, most of them children.

In the new study, Consumer Reports tested 36 cinnamon products and discovered high levels of lead in 12 cinnamon items sold at discount stores and ethnic markets. Sometimes, lead levels sometimes reached 3.5 parts per million.

How much lead is too much? The Codex Alimentarius, an international council created by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, is “considering adopting a maximum level of 2.5 ppm for lead in bark spices, including cinnamon, in 2024,” according to the FDA.

Badia, one common brand, sold cinnamon with one part per million of lead, according to the report.

Consumer Reports advised people to discard any items containing that amount of lead or more.

Just a quarter teaspoon of any of those products has more lead than you should consume in an entire day, James Rogers, director of food safety research and testing at Consumer Reports.

“If you have one of those products, we think you should throw it away,” he said in a Consumer Reports news release.

“Even small amounts of lead pose a risk because, over time, it can accumulate in the body and remain there for years, seriously harming health,” Rogers added.

But the amounts of lead found in the report were not small, experts noted.

While the levels in the cinnamon applesauce recalled last year were “astronomical,” those in the new report were still 1,000 times as high as the levels that concern experts, Tomás Guilarte, a neuroscience and environmental health professor at Florida International University, told the New York Times.

“These are extremely high levels of lead,” he said. “Clearly they shouldn’t be used.”

Still, Consumer Reports also found far lower levels of lead in some cinnamon products, including from some brands it said were safe to use: Whole Foods 365, McCormick, Penzeys and Morton & Bassett.

“These products demonstrate that it’s possible to produce cinnamon with no lead or extremely low levels,” Rogers noted.

Food safety experts say lead could enter cinnamon bark when trees grow in contaminated soil or when the spice is processed with aging machinery, the Times reported. Cinnamon mainly grows in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, the report said, and then is shipped around the world.

In the 2023 recall, the FDA has said it suspected that the cinnamon had been intentionally adulterated with lead chromate, a powder used to stretch the valuable commodity and boost profits.

Brian Ronholm, director of food safety policy at Consumer Reports, said the federal government should set a national policy on the amount of lead allowed in herbs and spices, something New York State already does.

“Ultimately, we want the FDA to develop a preventive strategy for reducing lead exposure in all foods,” he added in a Consumer Reports news release. “Right now, they’re just not in a position to do that because they’re chronically underfunded, and have been for decades, particularly on the food side, and that makes it very difficult for them to summon the will to focus on this.”

More information

The FDA has more on lead in food.

SOURCE: Consumer Reports, news release, Sept. 12, 2024; New York Times

Source: HealthDay

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