The baby product industry is an $11 billion annual business. Pampers, Johnson & Johnson, Chicco and other popular baby product manufacturers latch onto parents’ desires to provide the best for their children in order to fuel their company profits. Parents researched Consumer Reports to purchase the safest five-point harness car seats. They scour the internet to find alternatives to plastic chewing rings and pay hefty prices for high quality, water-based painted wooden toys from Germany for their infants to gnaw on. They stroll the aisles of grocery stores, paying higher costs to purchase organic baby food to nourish their growing babies. Ironically, while doing their best to keep their precious loved ones safe, they might be unknowingly feeding their children neurotoxins that have permanent and irreversible harmful effects.
A recent study published on October 2019 by Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF) tested 168 containers of baby food from 61 brands and 13 varieties, and purchased from 17 retailers located from major U.S. metropolitan areas, and found that 95 percent of baby foods contain at least one of the four toxic heavy metals. About a quarter of the samples tested contained all of them: arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and lead. The national investigation indicates that the 15 foods commonly consumed by infants and toddlers contribute to 55 percent of the risks to young children’s brains. Many popular brands, such as Gerber, Earth’s Best, Plum Organics, and Happy Baby were included in the study. Topping the report for most harmful food were rice-based products, including rice cereal and teething snacks, which not only contain inorganic arsenic, the most toxic form of arsenic, but also usually all four of the harmful metals. Other vegetable baby containers that pose the highest risks included carrots and sweet potatoes.
The consistent consumption of contaminated products can raise the risk of cancer, reproductive problems, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cognitive issues. Heavy metals are especially toxic to vulnerable babies due to their small size and their rapid growth and brain development. Damage to a baby at this early stage of life would be much more severe than compared to an adult. Charlotte Brody, a registered nurse and the national director of HBBF, along with other experts, agree that “what’s driving the problem is rice.” Nearly all baby foods made with rice tested positive for toxins. According to HBBF, rice based products caused the most brain damage of 10 percent lower IQ when eaten consistently during the early stages of life. The Scientific American explains that, “Rice, for example, readily takes in arsenic both because of its particular physiology and because it is often grown in fields flooded with water, which is a primary source of the metal.” Likewise, root vegetables, such as carrots and sweet potatoes, tend to absorb heavy metals more easily from the soil in which the produces grow in than other types of crops.
Brody considers heavy metals in baby foods to be a cause of a “legacy problem.”
“They come from pesticides that were sprayed on farms for generations,” according to WebMD. “Though most of those products containing toxic lead and arsenic are no longer used, their remnants continue to taint some areas of farmland around the country.” This is particularly true for rice grown in Texas, Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast where arsenic pesticides were used a century ago to eliminate boll weevils to grow cotton. For parents, contaminated soil means that buying organic baby foods or even preparing their own at home will not necessarily ease the situation as it is the actual produce or where it is grown that are the actual source of the trouble. Moreover, there are airborne pollutants and industrial operations that exacerbate the problem. In the manufacturing process, metals from the machines could also contaminate the baby food.
Responding to the HBBF study, some baby product companies are conducting investigations of their own to verify and discover the sources of contamination in their products. The “legacy problem” is difficult to avoid since so much farmland in the U.S. is still tainted with traces of heavy metals. Heavy metals occur naturally in farmland and is thereby impossible to reach a zero level, like Gerber suggested. Although it is impossible to reach a zero level, reductions can still be made. In its January article “It’s Time to Get Arsenic and Other Toxic Substances out of Baby Food”, Scientific American states, “the best chance of real change from food companies most likely come with regulation.”
Currently, the U.S. Government does not mandate any upper limit of metals in baby food. Several attempts to put regulations in place transpired but none of the proposals have been followed through. According to the HBBF, in 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed limiting inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal. Levels of lead and arsenic in fruit juice and rice were proposed in 2012, 2015 and 2017 in Congress but failed to pass. Both HBBF and Scientific American suggest implementing frequent testing to make sure the levels of toxins are minimal as HBBF indicates, “even the trace amounts of heavy metals found in baby food can alter the developing brain and erode a child’s IQ. The impacts add up with each meal or snack a baby eats.”
The FDA needs to move quicker and to have broader and greater reach in educating potential risks to the public at large. Protective standards on baby foods for the most vulnerable, who cannot advocate for themselves, need to be established and enforced. Not only should the responsibility be placed on Beech-Nut, Earth’s Best, Plum Organics and other baby food manufacturers to test their own products for safe limits, HBBF recommends that the FDA institute “a proactive testing program for heavy metals in foods consumed by babies and toddlers, similar to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s program for children’s toys (CPSC 2019).”
HBBF also advises to find alternatives to rice, such as barley. However, if rice is still chosen as a dietary source, HBBF advises to at least avoid brown rice as arsenic tends to concentrate in the husk. When selecting rice, a study in Consumer Reports also advises eating the basmati variety from California, India, and Pakistan as they have the lowest levels of heavy metals. Furthermore, to ensure babies are eating less toxins, root vegetables should be decreased as they typically contain more heavy metals. At the very least, vary the baby’s diet to include an assortment of produce other than sweet potatoes and carrots. Additionally, rice cereals can be replaced with oatmeal, and water can be offered in place of apple juice.
There are still plenty of ways parents can help reduce the amount of toxins in baby food. The most effective way could be to inform and educate others of the issue so that more pressure can be placed on the government in order to address this issue. After all, shouldn’t the baby product industry that generates tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue be held to a standard that, at the very least, protects our most vulnerable and youngest population?
Article by Huan Changvu of Cabin John Middle School
Graphic by Sophia Li of Takoma Park Middle School