Cinnamon

Completeness scorecard

Deterministic gap audit — no score is composite, no cell is LLM-judged. Each chip is re-derivable by re-running tools/evidence/build-ingredient-scorecard.mjs. review: residuals and missing data are worked autonomously via data/evidence/ingredient-scorecard-review-flags.csv and wiki/completeness-gaps.md.

Cinnamon — the dried inner bark of Cinnamomum trees, sold as Ceylon (Cinnamomum verum) or cassia (Cinnamomum aromaticum / cassia / loureiroi / burmannii, the dominant US-market form) — is the spice second only to turmeric in documented heavy-metals adulteration risk. The 2023-2024 WanaBana apple-cinnamon-puree outbreak in the United States linked cinnamon-containing baby food pouches to at least 519 confirmed cases of pediatric lead poisoning across multiple states, with the contaminated cinnamon traced to a single Ecuadorian processor (Carlos Aguilera) found to have added lead chromate to the cinnamon supply (napier2024-wanabana-apple-cinnamon-puree-lead-NC). FDA Import Alert 99-42 (fda-import-alert-99-42-spice-lead) names cinnamon among the priority detention-without-physical-examination targets. The current corpus loads 7 sources spanning the US (Angelon-Gaetz 2018 NC home investigations, Huff 2025 Lancaster PA, WanaBana 2024 outbreak documentation), Italy/Saudi Arabia/India/Iran/Indonesia/Vietnam (Cicero 2022 multi-origin 8-metal panel), Australia (LHAAC 2025 Coordinated Sampling Project 41 at n=380 retail samples, lhaac2025-csp41-herbs-spices-wa), and Australian-import-country product (Tinggi 2025 across India, China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Malaysia, tinggi2025-spices-herbs-queensland).

Why this commodity accumulates heavy metals

Cinnamon, like turmeric, has a bimodal heavy-metals distribution driven by adulteration rather than agronomy. Non-adulterated cinnamon (Ceylon or cassia) carries Pb at typical-spice levels of 50-500 ppb from ordinary soil-uptake into the inner-bark tissue and atmospheric deposition during sun-drying. Adulterated cinnamon carries Pb at 5,000-50,000 ppb (5-50 mg/kg) or higher, three to four orders of magnitude above non-adulterated baseline. The WanaBana case definitively documented the mechanism: ground cinnamon from a single Ecuadorian processor was intentionally adulterated with lead chromate (PbCrO₄, the same yellow-orange pigment implicated in the turmeric adulteration literature), with the contaminated cinnamon then incorporated into apple-cinnamon-puree baby food pouches sold under multiple brand labels across US retail. The Napier 2024 case report (napier2024-wanabana-apple-cinnamon-puree-lead-NC) traced cases across NC, OH, LA, AZ, and other states, with cinnamon-source lead concentrations as high as 5 million ppb (0.5%, well over 1,000× any reasonable limit) in the adulterated supply chain. Non-adulterated cinnamon carries metals through normal agronomy: Cinnamomum trees grown in soils with elevated background Cd or Pb take up modest amounts into the bark tissue. The Cicero 2022 multi-origin work covers Ceylon and cassia cinnamon from six countries and reports the non-adulterated baseline distribution across the 8-metal panel (cicero2022-minerals-spices-aromatic-herbs).

Heavy metal contamination profile

Per-analyte snapshot derived from the machine-readable contamination_profile in the frontmatter above. data gap indicates the literature has been reviewed for this commodity-analyte combination and no usable occurrence data was found (a finding, not a placeholder). The Key sources column shows the top 2-3 contributing sources by year and sample size, with numbered wikilink aliases.

Ranges by source, region, and variety

Variety: Ceylon cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum, “true cinnamon”) and cassia cinnamon (Cinnamomum aromaticum / cassia, the dominant US-market form) have similar baseline-agronomic metal profiles; they differ on coumarin content (Ceylon much lower than cassia) and on supply-chain origin (Ceylon predominantly Sri Lanka, cassia predominantly Vietnam, Indonesia, China). Origin: the Tinggi 2025 Queensland survey (tinggi2025-spices-herbs-queensland) of 69 spice samples across 7 origin countries documented retail-market cinnamon Pb-Cd-tAs at non-adulterated levels in Australian-market product. The Cicero 2022 6-country survey provides the strongest non-adulterated baseline distribution. The WanaBana case is the worst-case-tail anchor: Ecuadorian-processor cinnamon at concentrations five orders of magnitude above baseline. The Angelon-Gaetz NC home-investigation cohort identified cinnamon among the elevated-Pb spice samples in homes of children with elevated blood-lead levels (angelon-gaetz2018-lead-spices-north-carolina); the Huff 2025 Lancaster survey of 116 retail spices found cinnamon among the spices with measurable Pb but at non-adulterated levels typical of US-market product (huff2025-spices-lancaster-pa).

Processing effects

Whole-stick cinnamon (Ceylon “quill” or cassia bark) is essentially never adulterated because the visible-form integrity precludes adding powder-based pigments. Grinding cinnamon to powder at the brand’s own facility from verified whole-stick raw material eliminates the adulteration pathway. The traditional cinnamon processing chain (bark harvest, scraping, rolling, sun-drying, grading) does not introduce metals when conducted with clean equipment. The dominant processing-driven contamination event is the lead chromate addition at the powder-supplier stage, which is a deliberate adulteration. Steam sterilisation, irradiation, and microbial-control processing steps do not affect the metal load.

Ingredient-derivative risk

Whole-stick Ceylon or cassia cinnamon (visible-form integrity) is the lowest-risk form. Ground cinnamon from audited supply chains is acceptable; ground cinnamon from non-audited supply chains carries the documented adulteration tail-risk. Cinnamon extract and cinnamaldehyde extract (sold for flavoring) carry the parent cinnamon’s metal load proportional to extraction concentration. Cinnamon-containing finished products inherit the cinnamon’s metal load at the inclusion ratio. The 2023 WanaBana apple-cinnamon-puree outbreak is the canonical case for finished-product-level harm from adulterated cinnamon: a brand using non-audited ground cinnamon at a modest inclusion ratio in a baby-food puree produced lead concentrations in the finished product at levels of acute poisoning concern (napier2024-wanabana-apple-cinnamon-puree-lead-NC).

Mitigation options

Sourcing levers

Source whole-stick cinnamon (Ceylon or cassia) rather than ground product when feasible; in-brand grinding eliminates the powder-adulteration pathway. For ground product, specify country-of-origin away from documented-risk supply chains (Ecuadorian re-processed ground cinnamon and any non-audited South Asian ground product warrant additional QC) and require XRF screening at intake. The WanaBana case demonstrates that even an established US retail brand can be compromised when the upstream ground-cinnamon supplier is not audited. Direct-trade relationships with Sri Lankan Ceylon producers or Vietnamese cassia plantations enable supply-chain traceability that breaks the multi-handler adulteration pathway. The FDA Import Alert 99-42 (fda-import-alert-99-42-spice-lead) provides the US regulatory anchor for detention-without-physical-examination.

Agronomic levers

Agronomic interventions reduce the baseline soil-uptake Pb and Cd (already low: 50-500 ppb in non-adulterated product) but do not address the dominant adulteration pathway.

Processing levers

Verify that supplier mills do not add pigments at the grinding or polishing step. Audit downstream re-processors (the WanaBana case involved an Ecuadorian re-processor, not the original Sri Lankan or Indonesian source).

Formulation levers

For brand formulations using cinnamon, the inclusion ratio determines per-serving exposure proportionally. A baby-food puree with 1% cinnamon inclusion at 50,000 ppb Pb still carries 500 ppb Pb in the finished product, which is well above the FDA Closer-to-Zero benchmark for infant foods. The WanaBana case occurred at low single-percent cinnamon inclusion; adulteration concentrations were extreme enough that even tiny inclusion ratios produced harmful finished-product levels.

Testing and QC levers

Lot-level XRF screening at intake catches the Pb-and-Cr adulteration pattern simultaneously and is fast enough for every-lot screening of ground cinnamon. Confirmatory ICP-MS testing for samples flagged by XRF is the standard analytical chain. Detection floors ≤ 50 ppb Pb are well within commercial ICP-MS capability. For finished products using cinnamon (apple-cinnamon products, cinnamon-roll fillings, chai blends), lot-level finished-product testing is the brand-level final defense.

Packaging and storage levers

Packaging is not the dominant pathway for cinnamon.

Regulatory limits that apply

The Codex Alimentarius General Standard CXS 193-1995 does not set a cinnamon-specific maximum. The EU Regulation 2023/915 applies the spice maximum of 1.5 mg/kg Pb to cinnamon. The FDA’s Import Alert 99-42 is the operational US enforcement mechanism. The FDA Closer-to-Zero initiative applies to infant-and-toddler finished foods including cinnamon-containing baby foods; the WanaBana case is a documented enforcement event under this initiative (napier2024-wanabana-apple-cinnamon-puree-lead-NC). The NYS Department of Health 2019 spice-specific health-based guidance value of 0.21 mg/kg Pb is the strictest US-side advisory.

Sources

Auto-generated from source-page frontmatter. The “Used on this page for” column is populated by the orchestrator’s POPULATE-SOURCE-LEGEND action; pending entries appear as *[awaiting synthesis]*.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.