TUESDAY, Jan. 7, 2025 (HealthDay News) — The first-ever U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines on lead in baby food are under fire from health experts who argue the limits are too lenient and fail to protect children from harmful exposure to toxic metals.
Under the new FDA guidelines, baby food manufacturers should have no more than 10 parts per billion of lead in baby yogurts, custards, puddings, single-ingredient meats, processed fruits and vegetables, and mixtures of fruits, vegetables, grains, and meat.
Yet the new guidance does not cover many other products, such as infant formula, beverages, or snack foods like puffs and teething biscuits.
“Nearly all baby foods on the market already comply with these limits,” Jane Houlihan, research director of Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF), told CNN. HBBF is a coalition of advocates committed to reducing babies’ exposures to neurotoxic chemicals. Houlihan said the newly released FDA guidelines are ineffective — not to mention unenforceable.
In 2019, HBBF released a report that found toxic metals in 95 percent of baby foods randomly pulled off supermarket shelves. It led to a congressional investigation that discovered some baby food ingredients contain hundreds of parts per billion of dangerous metals, according to internal documents provided by major baby food manufacturers.
“As it stands, the new lead limits for commercial baby foods would reduce children’s total dietary lead exposure by less than 4 percent — a negligible improvement,” Houlihan told CNN in an email. “Lead in infant formula, homemade baby food ingredients, and foods bought outside the baby food aisle account for about three-fourths of children’s food exposures to lead.”
Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, addressed the release of the guidance and struck a similar note. “The FDA owes parents answers and must enforce these limits immediately to finally protect our most vulnerable population,” he said.
“For years, the FDA’s own data has shown dangerous levels of lead in baby food, yet the agency has dragged its feet while children’s developing brains were exposed to this neurotoxin,” Faber said in an email to CNN. “The harm is permanent, and the delay has put countless kids at unnecessary risk.”
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