Cashews

Cashews (Anacardium occidentale) sold as raw, roasted, salted, unsalted, or with seasonings. Cashew butter routes to row 14 (nut and seed butters, other). Contaminated row of the Row 11 / Row 12 / Row 13 triplet: soil-uptake elevated relative to other tree nuts driven by species and production geography (West Africa, Vietnam, India, Brazil). Cwielag pair mean 6,434 µg/kg Ni; BfR 2022 5,350 µg/kg.

This page is a Step 0 lock scaffold for Cat 4 Row 12. Literature evidence will be populated as routed source pages accumulate per the synthesis workflow in CLAUDE.md Part 9. The Step 0 lock document at Category4_Step_0_Output_LOCKED.md is the canonical reference for the row’s clean-vs-contaminated framing and platform attribution.

Who this page is for

Brand legal teams evaluating HMTc Cat 4 certification for the Cashews row need to know what the cited literature reports per panel metal, what the applicable regulatory caps are, and how this row relates to its clean-contaminated pair (when applicable). Retailer compliance teams stocking the produce, dried-goods, and snack aisles need the row-level assortment-eligibility view. HMT&C certification thresholds for products in this row are developed under the certification program at heavymetaltested.com, not on this page.

Methodology

This page reports what the cited sources say about heavy-metal concentrations in the Cashews row. Speciation is non-substitutable per CLAUDE.md Part 14 (iAs vs tAs, MeHg vs tHg, Cr-VI vs total Cr). Basis is preserved (as-sold or as-consumed depending on the product form). Non-detect handling follows each source’s convention. Pooling avoided across LOD/LOQ, period, geography, and analytical-basis differences. HMT&C certification thresholds for products in this row are developed under the certification program at heavymetaltested.com, not on this page; this public page reports literature evidence only.

Cat 4 lock empirical basis: Pass 2 occurrence-data extraction from the heavymetalindex.com wiki corpus (build claude/zealous-bhabha-d422c9, 896 source pages). The Step 0 lock document at Category4_Step_0_Output_LOCKED.md records the splitting decisions and platform attributions; this row inherits its scope from that document.

Pair relationship + platform attribution

This is the contaminated row of a Cat 4 clean-contaminated split. The clean counterpart is Row 11 (Nuts and Seeds, Other). The categorical metal-load difference is attributable to platform ingredient(s) carrying load on Ni. Cross-row platform coordination per the Cat 4 Step 0 lock: the Standards Workbench’s CC anchor for each platform is shared across all rows that share the platform, with per-row final limits diverging based on commercial-product variation.

Literature Evidence Summary

Literature Evidence Summary

The table below summarizes what the peer-reviewed and government literature cited on this page reports for heavy-metal concentrations in Cashews. Values are pulled directly from cited sources without re-aggregation; pooling, percentile selection, and threshold math sit in the staff Standards Workbench rather than this public page.

Methodology rules for speciation, basis preservation, non-detect handling, and source pooling are stated in the Methodology section above and apply to every row below.

Source Evidence Inventory

_Hand-curated section. Populated by the synthesis pass as Cat 4 sources route to this row. Initial scaffold state: zero contributing sources. The Cat 4 corpus search prioritizes sources reporting concentration data on the specific commodity in this row; broad-scope produce surveys are filed under the master.

Broad Product Context: Author-Scope Index

Pending: regenerated by tools/evidence/apply-product-broad-context.mjs once broad-scope Cat 4 sources route to this page.

Federal/Regulatory Limits vs Field Findings

Pending. Cat 4 regulatory landscape: Codex GSCTFF and EU Regulation 2023/915 set finished-product limits on fruits and vegetables (Pb, Cd) and on specific commodities (e.g., spinach Cd at 0.20 mg/kg per eu-2023-915); FDA Closer-to-Zero applies to infant fruit purées (Cat 1, not Cat 4) but informs the regulatory baseline; California Prop 65 covers cumulative Pb/Cd exposure across produce categories. Awaiting agency-page ingest.

Levers to reduce contamination

The Cat 4 Step 0 lock framework distinguishes lower-contamination row produce/seed rows from contaminated-platform commodity rows (where species or production system carries elevated metal load by characteristic). For this row, the levers below are ordered by impact magnitude per the literature evidence base; sourcing-and-agronomic levers dominate the per-product metal load, with processing-and-formulation levers offering additional reduction.

1. Sourcing levers (highest impact): supplier and origin-region selection for the platform commodity. Within-species variance by origin region is documented in the literature; pre-screened low-impurity supply is commercially available.
2. Agronomic levers: soil amendments (Cd accumulation in spinach/sunflower is reducible via soil-pH and silicon-amendment interventions documented in phytoremediation literature; geocarpic Al uptake in peanuts responds to soil-Al management).
3. Cultivar/varietal selection: where within-species variance is documented, low-accumulating cultivars are commercially viable.
4. Processing levers where applicable: rinsing, hulling, blanching may reduce surface-bound metal load on whole-seed/whole-bean formats; refining-grade differences for butter formats.
5. Formulation levers: reduce the platform-commodity fraction of multi-ingredient products where function permits.
6. Testing/QC levers: lot-level ICP-MS on raw commodity and finished product. Cat 4 supply chains routinely COA at the µg/kg level for premium-spec commodity.
7. Regulatory levers (not brand-controllable): supporting Codex and state-level fruit/vegetable Pb/Cd limits drives industry-wide tightening.

How standards math uses this page

The percentile arithmetic that informs HMTc Cat 4 thresholds for this row lives on the staff Standards Workbench (data/workbench/standards/cashews.md, to be generated). This public page reports literature evidence; the workbench applies the Cat 4 methodology (which includes the literature evidence occurrence-data-driven derivation and below-LOQ regulatory-floor fallback per the Step 0 lock) to produce candidate threshold values. The gap between literature evidence and HMTc thresholds is named honestly on the workbench, not hidden.

Historical recalls and enforcement

Cat 4 (produce, nuts, seeds) regulatory enforcement intersects two domains: heavy-metal contamination (the focus of this row) and microbial contamination (FDA recall notices for E. coli/Salmonella/Listeria in fresh produce, a separate concern). FDA Total Diet Study and Pesticide Data Program surveillance reports establish the heavy-metal occurrence baseline (FDA 2022). State-level Cd-in-leafy-greens enforcement has been active in California under Prop 65; the related Mateel Environmental settlement framework has shaped compliance practice. Per CLAUDE.md Part 12, individual brand recall actions are not enumerated here.

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.