dont worry everyone, conservatives will make sure the FDA doesnt have the right to do this as soon as they can
Well yeah, you’ve got to create a new generation of republicans.
Technically it’s already happened.
Ok, everybody is justifiably freaked out that these limits are 1) new, 2) voluntary, and 3) not zero. But don’t worry, there’s a simple explanation that is so much worse than you think it is.
Lead is everywhere. It occurs naturally, but also due to decades of leaded gasoline and leaded water pipes, we still have toxic levels of lead in the air, soil, and groundwater in many food-producing regions. And because the EPA has been underfunded and impeded by capitalists at every opportunity, the lack of monitoring or enforcement has permitted corporations to dump lead in their wastewater. It’s very easy to dissolve lead in water, and has a nonzero cost to remove, so of course they don’t when nobody is looking. And that’s just the food we grow in the USA. Imported produce might come from a country with even fewer restrictions on lead contamination.
All this means that we cannot predict how much lead is in the crops we produce and eat. Fruits don’t tend to accumulate lead, but root vegetables, leafy greens, and grains can all be silently toxic. It can come from the soil, the water, or the air. So food manufacturers were given a pass on lead, because they cannot predict or prevent how much lead is in the raw ingredients they buy, and it would be too expensive to test all the food we eat.
This is a good first step to create limits on baby food, since infants are the most affected by lead toxicity and it’s easy enough to test batches of pureed ingredients. It would be better to create actual regulations with enforcement, and fund the agencies responsible for both. But this is a small step in the right direction.
but also due to decades of leaded gasoline and leaded water pipes, we still have toxic levels of lead in the air, soil, and groundwater in many food-producing regions.
And there it is. Leaded gasoline.
Leaded pipes can be replaced, or water can be treated (iirc) to prevent it from leeching lead. Natural lead is far from uncommon, but usually is not in a form that ends up ingested.
But because they added lead to make it easier to produce engines that didn’t knock, we are paying the price for it world wide and to this day.
Because we never stopped using it. We just decided to only use it in planes, and than built all the farms in the flight paths because nobody wanted to live there.
What’s frustrating about that is we now have alternatives to 100LL, and it still hasn’t been phased out.
While expensive and would likelu make a lot of people really angry - regulators should have mandated that any non-diesal or non-turbine aircraft get scrapped. I would believe those fuel alternatives would have been found much quicker and be in use much earlier.
Only some?
Hey, don’t worry. The limits are voluntary and not mandatory. But the best part is
“The new limits on lead for children younger than 2 don’t cover grain-based snacks like puffs and teething biscuits, which some research has shown contain higher levels of lead. And they don’t limit other metals such as cadmium that have been detected in baby foods.”
I hope that eases your concern a little.
Cadmium is by far the best yellow food colouring
The expensive stuff only sold in rich neighborhoods.
Great, now I’ll have to add my own lead
They never get it right, just like salted butter.
Always better off home brewing.
Don’t worry, it’s completely voluntary.
Government overreach. How dare they limit our freedom this way.
Shrinkflation strikes again!
The meat of the article is in the last three paragraphs. This is purely administrative, we already know the safe level is zero and the FDA takes action when there’s levels above regular natural absorption.
If anything, this is just getting ahead of the Trump administration saying “well we haven’t set a safety threshold so just so whatever”. That should be the real story.
Now they’ll have to replace it with sugar.
Well, if they can’t use ancient sweeteners they’ll use the newer ones.
