United States: Consumer Reports revealed that out of the cinnamon products sampled, a third contained high lead content, the watchdog agency announced on Thursday.
The detection of the metals comes after alarming cases of metals in foods, especially after the poisonous cinnamon applesauce affected over 200 people in 44 states of America last year majority of whom were children.
As reported by HealthDay, In the new study Consumer Reports tried 36 cinnamon products and found that 12 cinnamon items sold at discount stores and ethnic markets having high lead content. At times lead levels were even as high as 3 at some times. 5 parts per million.
What is actually a tolerable level of lead? According to the FDA, though the Codex Alimentarius, an international council of the World Health Organization and also the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, is “is to set a maximum limit of 2. 5 ppm for lead in bark spices, including cinnamon, in 2024”.
A brand, which popular is Badia, was identified to contain cinnamon with lead level of one part per million, the report revealed.
Anything with lead at that amount or higher was considered as a product to be thrown away according to Consumer Reports.
If you take a quarter teaspoonful of any of those products, you are taking almost as much lead as you should ideally take in a day, according to James Rogers, who is the director of food safety research and also 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.
“Small quantities are a problem because lead accumulates in the body and is known to remain in the system for many years causing significant harm to health,” parroted Rogers.
Still, the amounts of lead that were discovered in the report, were not petty, pointed out the experts.
The levels in the cinnamon applesauce that was recalled last year were ‘astronomical’ but those in the new report are still one thousand times those considered by experts to be unsafe, New York Times quotes Tomás Guilarte, the Florida International University professor of neuroscience and environmental health.
These are extremely high levels of the lead he said. “Clearly they shouldn’t be used.”
Still, the consumer Reports also found far lower levels of the lead in some of the cinnamon products which includes from the some of the brands it said were the safe to use and whole foods 365 McCormick, Penzeys and Morton & Bassett.