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Examples of Lead Content of Food, from EU
re: heavy metals
re: Scientific Opinion on Lead in Food1 EFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain
From COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) 2021/1317 of 9 August 2021.
The issue with this table is that it is per kilogram. No one eats a kilogram of salt or honey in a day (or week), but you might well eat a kilogram of potatoes or cereal in a week. Thus the table by itself is highly misleading to unwary reader.
The only useful thing to know is total lead absorption, which is unknowable. That is, absorption is lower in food but presumably very for salt or nutritional supplements since those things lack the bulk and fiber of food. In other words, it’s a guessing game.
Even ignoring absorption, to make any reasonable use of this table, multiple intake amount in kg by the figure given for lead content.
Thing is, you don’t know what the level actually is for most of this stuff; it could easily vary by 10X for things like seafood.
For example according to this table, eating one kg of meat per week would mean an intake of 100 mcg (micrograms) of lead for meat at the cutoff level.
Example calculations
mcg = microgram, ppm = parts per million assumed to be by weight
As noted above, my “tolerable” weekly intake for my body size of ~80 kg would be 80*25 = 2000 mcg. A figure of 1/4 that would be much more sensible as a goal.
Magnesium supplementation and its lead contamination
One must assume that in liquid form, absorption would be nearly total.
Suppose I take 3 servings per day of magnesium using Heiltropfen Lab magnesium hexahydrate. At the specified maximum lead of 2ppm = 2mcg per serving, that means 3 X 7 X 2 = 42 mcg per week, which is 2.1% of the “tolerable” weekly intake. Compare that to the Nutricost product which has only 0.061 mcg per serving which is 33X lower. Ask for independent lab analysis of all supplements and never buy from a vendor that cannot supply them.
Lead and cadmium in dark chocolate
re: Lead and Cadmium Could Be in Your Dark Chocolate
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Table of lead values
| Metals of the Annex to Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006, subsection 3.1 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Foodstuff | mg/kg net weight | mcg/kg |
| Raw milk (6), heat-treated milk and milk for the manufacture of milk-based products | 0.02 | 20 |
| Infant formulae, follow-on formulae and young child formulae (57) marketed as powder (3) (29) | 0.02 | 20 |
| marketed as liquid (3) (29) | 0.01 | 10 |
| Processed cereal-based foods and baby foods for infants and young children (3) (29) other than those listed under point | 0.02 | 20 |
| Foods for special medical purposes intended for infants and young children marketed as powder | 0.02 | 20 |
| marketed as liquid | 0.01 | 10 |
| Drinks for infants and young children labelled and sold as such, other than those mentioned under points marketed as liquids or to be reconstituted following instructions of the manufacturer including fruit juices (4) | 0.02 | 20 |
| Meat (excluding offal) of bovine animals, sheep, pig and poultry (6) | 0.10 | 100 |
| Muscle meat of fish (24) (25) | 0.30 | 300 |
| Cephalopods (52) | 0.30 | 300 |
| Crustaceans (26) (44) | 0.50 | 500 |
| Bivalve molluscs (26) | 1.50 | 1500 |
| Cereals and pulses | 0.20 | 200 |
| Root and tuber vegetables (excluding salsifies, fresh ginger and fresh turmeric), bulb vegetables, flowering brassica, head brassica, kohlrabies, legume vegetables and stem vegetables (27) (53) | 0.10 | 100 |
| Leafy brassica, salsify, the following fungi Agaricus bisporus (common mushroom), Pleurotus ostreatus (Oyster mushroom), Lentinula edodes (Shiitake mushroom) and leafy vegetables (excluding fresh herbs) (27) | 0.30 | 300 |
| Wild fungi, fresh turmeric and fresh ginger | 0.80 | 800 |
| Fruiting vegetables | 0.05 | 50 |
| Fruit, excluding cranberries, currants, elderberries and strawberry tree fruit (27) | 0.10 | 100 |
| Cranberries, currants, elderberries and strawberry tree fruit (27) | 0.20 | 200 |
| Fats and oils, including milk fat | 0.10 | 100 |
| Fruit juices, concentrated fruit juices as reconstituted and fruit nectars | 0.03 | 30 |
| Wine (including sparkling wine, excluding liqueur wine), cider, perry and fruit wine | 0.15 | 150 |
| Aromatised wine, aromatised wine-based drinks and aromatised wine-product cocktails | 0.15 | 150 |
| Food supplements (39) | 3.00 | 3000 |
| Honey | 0.10 | 100 |
| Fruit spices | 0.6 | 600 |
| Root and rhizome spices | 1.5 | 1500 |
| Bark spices | 2 | 2000 |
| Bud spices and flower pistil spices | 1 | 1000 |
| Seed spices | 0.9 | 900 |
| Salt, except the following unrefined salts: ‘fleur de sel’ and ‘grey salt’ which are manually harvested from salt marshes with a clay bottom | 1.00 | 1000 |
| The following unrefined salts: ‘fleur de sel’ and ‘grey salt’ which are manually harvested from salt marshes with a clay bottom | 2 | 2000 |
