Heavy Metal Index — Overview
Heavy Metal Index is a curated reference on heavy metals in food, the supply chain that delivers food, the remediation interventions available to growers and processors, and the regulatory findings that govern the trade. The index is operated by the Paleo Foundation and lives at heavymetalindex.com.
The index reports what the peer-reviewed and regulatory literature supports. It does not prescribe thresholds, it does not rank brands, and it does not substitute for reading the primary sources. Every quantitative claim on this wiki carries a citation that links back to a source page, which in turn links to the raw document.
What this index covers
The scope is heavy metals in the human food system. That includes the metals themselves, the commodities in which they accumulate, the product categories that concentrate them further, the supply chain conditions that produce contamination, the analytical methods used to measure it, the regulatory thresholds set by jurisdictions worldwide, and the health consequences of exposure.
Microbiome effects of heavy metal exposure are in scope where the primary connection is metal exposure. Broader microbiome medicine belongs to WikiBiome, the sister project.
What this index does not cover
Brand-level testing results, certification decisions, and internal lab data do not appear in this wiki. Those live in separate infrastructure. The index is evidentially independent from the Paleo Foundation’s Heavy Metal Tested and Certified program; keeping that architectural separation intact is what makes the index defensible as a reference.
Methodology
A methodology page will be added before the public launch, describing how papers are selected, how extraction is performed, what the quality audit found, and how corrections are handled. Readers who want to evaluate the index’s claims should start there.
Status
This wiki is in the early build phase. The first batch of ingests is in progress, beginning with cadmium as the pilot metal. Expect substantial gaps until the pilot is complete. Current progress can be traced through log.