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LEAD (Pb)

ATOMIC NUMBER: 82

GROUP 14: CARBON, SILICON, GERMANIUM, AND TIN

Lead is a shiny, bluish-white heavy metal that dulls to gray when it comes into contact with air. Its legendary usage is closely tied to the rise and fall of civilization, used in water-carrying pipes, glazed pottery, cooking utensils, and even the preservation of wines by the ancient Romans, who produced some 40 percent of the world’s lead alongside their abundant quantities of silver and other precious metals.

Plumbing itself draws its name from plumbum, the Latin word for lead (abbreviated as Pb), a luxury afforded only to the patrician class in what was once the world’s greatest empire. The poisonous effects of lead were known to antiquity, and lead was noted among some thinkers of the time for its effect on shipbuilders. High levels of lead have been found in the bones of patrician gravesites, leading historians to believe it played a role as a regular part in the decadent lifestyle of the upper class, who suffered stillbirths, lower fertility, brain damage, and deformities as Rome’s glory faded.¹⁷⁴

But these lessons, misplaced in the dark ages, had to be relearned again in the modern industrial age. The “epidemic” effects of lead exposure were starkly noticed alongside spikes of disease in the nineteenth century during the production and manufacture of spreading industrialization.

Industrial assault of lead

In considering the modern-day hazards of lead exposure, tainted paint chips and the environmental disaster that was leaded gasoline might immediately come to mind. Although a small amount of lead is naturally occurring, the industrial revolution that began in the latter half of the eighteenth century created the conditions for widespread contamination all over the world. Today, everything from agricultural pesticide use to cosmetics, bullets, batteries, and pipes, to industrial practices such as mining and smelting continue to contribute to overall environmental lead contamination.

Unsafe at any level

No safety threshold for lead has ever been established—a multitude of studies have proven time and again lead is downright dangerous to health at any level. Government organizations such as the EPA have admitted there is no safe allowable level of lead intake.¹⁷⁵ Even in small amounts, this cumulative toxin competes with calcium, iron, and zinc, blocking absorption of these necessary nutrients and wreaking havoc.

Unlike other metals, which play a role in biochemical reactions, lead is just a pollutant. It has no known essential function within the human body, and science has long acknowledged that lead is poisonous to every bodily system. Once lead enters the air, it can travel far distances before it falls to the ground where it readily contaminates water and soil. This cycle inevitably leads to lead-tainted crops that are cooked into lead-tainted dinners. Exposure to cigarette smoke, even secondhand, can also mean exposure to dangerous amounts of lead.

As such, the EPA regulates it under seven different acts: the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992 (Title X), the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).¹⁷⁶

Unrestricted and pervasive exposure in foods

Although we are exposed to lead in the air we breathe and the water we drink, many organizations, including the European Food Safety Authority, have concluded that the majority of human lead exposure actually comes from the food we eat.¹⁷⁷

However, even with all the bad press about lead—as with toys from China and cosmetics—and despite the fact that we know lead inflicts neurological damage on the brain and contributes to cancer, there is no fundamental framework for limiting exposure to food-based lead contamination. Despite the effort to control the impact of this dangerous substance on the environment under the guise of the EPA, there are no limits on the concentration of lead allowed in food sold in the United States, apart from a few specific products, such as candy and food additives, where the FDA has set maximum allowable thresholds.

Because lead pollution taints the water and soil that is used to grow crops for human consumption, all foods may contain some trace amount of the heavy metal (parts per trillion). Shoddy industrial food-processing practices have led to even more contamination from heavy metals. Trace levels of lead exist in many important foods we consume every day, but, generally speaking, regulators consider trace levels of lead contamination to be safe only because they are focused on short-term, acute effects that are almost never linked directly to the consumption of a food or dietary supplement. Lead is accepted in food at varying trace levels in part because lead is so difficult to avoid, and furthermore, because harmful effects from lead bioaccumulation typically show up years down the road with little solid connection to any specific foods, nutritional supplements, or protein powders.

When I appealed to Whole Foods to pull the lead-contaminated protein powders from their store shelves, the retailer did nothing to halt their sales of such products. Whole Foods continues to sell vegan, organic protein powders in its stores that show alarming concentrations of lead contamination because the raw materials are sourced from China. Instead of responding in a responsible way to my appeal, Whole Foods managers and employees began spreading rumors that claimed my laboratory didn’t exist and that none of their protein powders contained lead. Whole Foods is another example of a corporation that misleads health-conscious consumers into thinking they’re buying “clean” foods when, in reality, many of those foods have been contaminated with significant concentrations of lead.¹⁷⁸

Children most affected by lead

According to the EFSA’s Scientific Opinion on Lead in Food, cereals were found to contribute most to a person’s daily dietary lead intake.¹⁷⁹ This is particularly troubling in light of the fact that many cereals are marketed to the most vulnerable members of our society—kids. Children have been found to be at greater risk for lead poisoning and toxicity than adults because their systems are still developing and they usually absorb more lead than adults do. Fetuses and nursing infants are way less equipped to metabolize harsh toxins, so amounts that are harmful to an adult can be downright deadly to a baby.

Lead accumulation, as well as that of other heavy metals such as cadmium, in the roots and shoots of wheat and other grains remains a major concern, as a direct result of heavy metal contamination in soils around the globe.¹⁸⁰ A study conducted by the University of Valencia in Spain compared the lead and cadmium content of twenty-nine different infant cereals commercially available on the market, and found consistent contamination levels of both cadmium and lead in the milk-free varieties, and even higher levels of lead in milk-containing infant cereals, foods that comprise a major part of an infant’s diet starting between four and six months old.¹⁸¹

Another dietary staple for infants who are not breast-fed is infant formula. As infant formulas require reconstitution before they are prepared, if lead is already in the drinking water (especially in a home more than twenty years old that may have old pipes) and the water is heated during the preparation process, infants can be exposed to dangerously high levels of lead through a diet completely reliant on formula as the main source of nutrition. While the FDA assumes that manufacturers will adhere to rules when creating a new formula product, the agency warns on its website that infant formulas may be marketed without prior FDA approval.¹⁸²

Lead confirmed in more than 80 percent of food samples

Too many times, foodstuffs purchased at grocery stores across the country have later been found to be tainted with troubling levels of lead, though not enough testing is done to prevent lead from entering into the food supply. These high levels of lead are not limited to conventional or imported foods but also appear in foods raised organically. The Environmental Law Foundation commissioned a study in 2010 that sampled nearly 150 popular children’s food products, including fruit juices, fruit cocktail mixes, and even processed baby food. Foods tested were chosen from both conventional and organic sources. Using an EPA-certified lab in Berkeley, California, to test the nearly 400 samples taken, it was determined that an astounding 125 out of 146 foods contained disconcerting amounts of lead.¹⁸³ The results were so damning that the FDA was compelled to respond, although the organization only tested thirteen samples of similar foods for comparison. The agency claimed that, while lead was found in the items, it was in parts per billion, and thus, was less than the 0.1 parts per million, or 100 ppb, the agency had set for candy in children.

My own testing of foods for lead has found alarming results, including:

• 500 ppb lead in cacao superfoods

• Over 500 ppb lead in certified organic rice protein

• Over 11 ppm (11,000 ppb) lead in organic mangosteen powder

• Over 300 ppb lead in turmeric supplements

• Over 400 ppb lead in green superfood powders

• Over 800 ppb in sea vegetable superfoods

• Over 150 ppb in healthy breakfast cereals

• Over 300 ppb in cilantro powder

• Over 1,000 ppb in chopped clams

• Over 300 ppb in maca root powder

• Over 100 ppb in some spirulina powders (from India)

• Over 500 ppb in common cooking spices

• Over 1,800 ppb in popular pet treats (made in China)

• Over 8,000 ppb in calcium supplements

• Over 600 ppb in some trace mineral supplements

• Over 7,000 ppb in citrus tree fertilizers

• Over 900 ppb in chlorella supplements grown in China (other samples of chlorella were far cleaner)

These are extraordinary results the FDA seems to pretend do not exist. Yet these results were derived from off-the-shelf purchases of foods and supplements consumed by people every single day.

During the government shutdown of October 2013, the FDA held off on sending out food-safety recall e-mails, so all of the releases between October 1 and October 17 were batch e-mailed on October 17. Among those were several warnings from different distributors that PRAN brand turmeric powder was contaminated with dangerously high levels of lead. Some batches reportedly contained 48 and 53 ppm, as the powder delivers a concentrated form of the root vegetable’s background exposure.¹⁸⁴

Although the FDA began considering a limit on lead exposure from foods back in the 1930s due to lead-containing pesticides and the lead-based solder on food cans, even to this day, the agency has yet to establish a regulatory limit for lead levels in all foods across the board. Instead, the FDA has set limits on specific items in response to pressure by consumer advocate groups, such as bottled water (5 parts per billion¹⁸⁵), children’s candy (0.1 parts per million¹⁸⁶), and food additives (varies widely by additive). For example, the lead content in candy wasn’t even on the regulatory radar until 1994, when authorities in California discovered inks used in printed candy wrappers were seeping into the candy, causing the FDA to react in 1995 with the new standard.

In 1994, the FDA set a tentative daily limit for lead intake, which it termed the provisional tolerable total intake level (PTTIL), and included both food and nonfood sources. The bar was set so that the resulting daily lead limits in blood would be 75 µg/dL for adults, 25 µg/dL for pregnant women, 15 µg/dL for children over seven years, and 6 µg/dL for infants and children under six years.¹⁸⁷ (It was not explained how the threshold of adulthood suddenly makes a person safely eligible for much higher levels of daily lead exposure.) Within the same document that proposed these limits, the FDA admitted studies have shown lead presence in the blood as low as 25 to 30 µg/dL could trigger high blood pressure and eventually cause cardiovascular disease.

Federal regulators have repeatedly claimed that actual daily food exposure to lead and other metals is much lower, but without tests on specific foods and production lots, how would the average individual gauge the threat from this toxin, particularly as data have shown significant harm from the bioaccumulation of this heavy metal over time?

Rare in nature, most prevalent in its inorganic form

Though it comes in organic and inorganic forms, lead is rare in nature and it is mostly the inorganic form of lead that continues to proliferate, contaminating everything with which it comes in contact. The use of leaded gasoline began being phased out in 1973, but it was not entirely banned for sale until the U.S. Clean Air Act went into full force in 1996. Although no longer allowed in formulations after 1978, lead dust from lead-based paint decay continues to be a danger in older homes, especially to growing infants and toddlers who like to crawl around on the floor. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission lists over 3,400 documents regarding the regulations and recalls of lead-contaminated items, including toys, electronics, clothing, and medicines.¹⁸⁸

Lead was not officially banned in toys in America until 2008, when the U.S. Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) following a series of high-publicity recall cases on toys and baby products found to contain dangerously high amounts of the heavy metal. Mattel Inc., the parent company of Fisher-Price, was forced to recall nearly 20 million toys worldwide including 9.5 million in the United States back in 2007. Of the two recalls announced in a two-week period, the first involved 1.5 million toys marketed to preschool-aged children. Manufactured in China, where roughly 80 percent of the world’s toys are made, Mattel’s toys were pulled from store shelves due in part to the discovery of lead-based paints that could flake off and cause harm. Considering that preschoolers like to put things in their mouths, the potential for lead poisoning went well beyond a toddler merely touching a leaded item.

Still, even today, researchers and watchdog groups continue to find lead well above regulatory levels lurking in consumer goods. For other products that come into contact with a consumer’s skin and mucous membranes, the FDA may or may not have set an allowable lead limit. For example, the agency has not set a limit on lead in cosmetics,¹⁸⁹ but has established a maximum threshold for the color dyes used in cosmetics, which the FDA regulates to 20 parts per million lead.

Studies continue to show that, even though not directly ingested in large amounts, repeated daily application of lead-containing cosmetics can add up to significant and cumulatively dangerous exposure.¹⁹⁰ The FDA commissioned a study of lead in popular U.S. cosmetics in 2010 and found that, of over 400 lipsticks, including samples of the most popular brands purchased at retail stores, every single one contained lead—all of them.¹⁹¹

Developmental impairment as neurotoxin

Science has already confirmed a link between neuropsychological damage during development in early childhood and the intake of low levels of lead through chronic exposure. Brain and nervous system damage caused by lead poisoning can disrupt a child’s actual learning ability, and it can cause behavioral issues such as hyperactivity and aggression. Lead crosses the placenta, harming the brains of unborn children in the womb, and it has been directly linked with lowered IQ scores throughout life.

Researchers at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation conducted a survey of seven year olds and lead exposure, which showed an average decrease of four to five IQ points when raised blood lead measurements were recorded between fifteen months and four years of age.¹⁹² A 2013 study found that children who sustained lead poisoning and presented with blood lead levels of greater than 10 but less than 20 µg/dL before age three did significantly worse on end-of-grade elementary school exams than children with lower blood lead levels.¹⁹³ Researchers have also concluded that lead exposure both before and after birth can cause significant memory impairment.¹⁹⁴

Lead has, of course, been found to be a neurotoxin in adults as well. Elevated bone lead levels in the elderly have been associated with dementia and other negative mental health issues.¹⁹⁵ In a fifteen-year study on the effects of lead in the adult brain, researchers concluded that past exposure to lead may actually be attributable to a significant amount of what the medical profession generally considers “normal” age-related cognitive decline.¹⁹⁶

Contributions to cardiovascular disease, the world’s leading killer, and more