Heavy metals in Dietary Supplements

Overview

The narrative and the evidence summary on this page grow as studies are catalogued.

Who this page is for

This page is for brand legal, retailer-compliance, and regulator readers who need the current literature record for Dietary Supplements. It is a public evidence surface, not a certification-threshold table. Readers should use it to see which cited sources actually support this product row and to keep row fit, market, basis, and analyte species visible.

Evidence summary

Pending: regenerated by tools/evidence/apply-product-hmtc-evidence-summaries.mjs once sources route and the pooling engine emits aggregate rows for this product category.

Source Evidence Inventory

At this synthesis stage, the inventory is used to distinguish direct finished-product occurrence data from broader dietary, ingredient, exposure, or review context. Sources that do not resolve product form, jurisdiction, basis, or analyte species remain visible here but should not be treated as benchmark-ready rows until structured extraction and routing confirm fit.

Supporting evidence and scope

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

Federal/Regulatory Limits vs Field Findings

Pending: regenerated by tools/apply-product-crosswalk-sections.mjs once applicable_regulations are identified and field-finding evidence is pooled.

Controls and mitigation

The practical control levers for Dietary Supplements start with product identity and lot-level evidence: keep the product form, ingredient contributors, market, and analytical basis attached to each test result. Sourcing and formulation controls should focus on ingredients or mineral/colorant/botanical inputs named by the routed sources, while finished-product testing remains the check on combined formulation, processing, and packaging effects. Where the current sources are review or exposure-context sources, the immediate lever is better row-specific occurrence testing rather than broad cross-category inference.

Direct answer

For the question of whether creatine, magnesium, collagen, mushroom, and herbal supplements contain heavy metals, this category page does not name retail brands; creatine has no filed product measurement, because Abuawad et al. 2023 dosed 3 g creatine per day and measured blood arsenic metabolites, and that source page states the trial should not enter a supplement occurrence pool (The Folic Acid and Creatine Trial: Treatment Effects of Supplementation on Arsenic Methylation Indices and Metabolite Concentrations in Blood in a Bangladeshi Population, DOI 10.1289/EHP11270), while magnesium has no filed concentration in a finished magnesium supplement, the element record is Magnesium, and those two rows are Ingredient class — amino acids & isolates and Ingredient class — vitamin/mineral (single, multi-mineral, multi-vitamin/mineral). Collagen figures from the later protein-powder screen stay on Ingredient class — protein/collagen powders; Clean Label Project 2020 reported measurable total arsenic in 64 percent of 30 collagen products (0.09 to 4.7 µg per serving) and measurable lead in 37 percent (0.09 to 1.57 µg per serving), with mercury not quantitated above an 8 ppb limit of quantification (The True Content and Faces Behind America's Best-Selling Collagen: 2020 Collagen Heavy Metals Study, no DOI), and Cammilleri et al. 2025 reported total arsenic up to 1.11 mg/kg wet weight in Atlantic cod collagen (mean 0.912 +/- 0.16 mg/kg) without inorganic arsenic speciation (Toxic metals and metalloids in collagen supplements of fish and jellyfish origin: Risk assessment for daily intake, DOI 10.1515/med-2025-1141). Herbal measurements are on Ingredient class — botanicals/herbs/traditional formulas and Herbal botanicals, mushroom measurements are on Ingredient class — mushroom/fungal extracts (lion's mane, reishi, cordyceps, chaga), Jairoun et al. 2020 reported mean daily intakes of 0.73 µg cadmium, 0.85 µg lead, and 0.67 µg total arsenic in 277 United Arab Emirates dietary supplements, with 3 of 277 products over a cited acceptable daily intake (Heavy Metal contamination of Dietary Supplements products available in the UAE markets and the associated risk, DOI 10.1038/s41598-020-76000-w), research-peptide testing is on Research Chemicals, Peptides & SARMs (HMTc Category 26 master), and oral supplement-powder testing is on Oral solids: powders (bulk tubs, sachets, stick packs).

How standards math uses this page

This page reports what the peer-reviewed and government literature says about heavy-metal concentrations in this product category; it publishes no certification thresholds of its own. Certification criteria are set separately under the Heavy Metal Tested & Certified program at heavymetalcertified.com, which reads this page as its literature baseline. The two are kept apart by design, so this page remains an independent record of the evidence rather than a justification for any threshold.

Historical recalls and enforcement

No row-specific public recall or enforcement synthesis has been promoted for Dietary Supplements in this pass. Regulatory references on this page should be read as context unless a source ties an event to this exact product scope and analyte. Future enforcement prose should remain event-framed and should not convert source mentions into brand rankings.

Methodology

This page follows the Part 6 product-page rules: values stay in the source-reported basis, non-detect handling follows the source, and analyte species are not substituted. Produce and food evidence is kept jurisdiction- and market-aware, with fresh, dried, canned, infused, or processed forms separated when basis changes. This page reports the literature; certification thresholds are set separately under the certification program, not on this page.

References

Works cited in this page’s text, in first-appearance order. See Sources for this page’s source inventory. Each title links to a source record with bibliographic details, reported findings, and document provenance.

1. The Folic Acid and Creatine Trial: Treatment Effects of Supplementation on Arsenic Methylation Indices and Metabolite Concentrations in Blood in a Bangladeshi PopulationAbuawad AK, Bozack AK, Navas-Acien A, Goldsmith J, Liu X, Hall MN, et al. · Environmental Health Perspectives · 2023 · doi.org/10.1289/EHP11270Peer-reviewed
2. The True Content and Faces Behind America’s Best-Selling Collagen: 2020 Collagen Heavy Metals StudyOrganic Consumers Association and Clean Label Project · Clean Label Project & Organic Consumers Association white paper · 2020 · cleanlabelproject.orgIndustry
3. Toxic metals and metalloids in collagen supplements of fish and jellyfish origin: Risk assessment for daily intakeCammilleri G, Tortorici M, Pantano L, Galluzzo FG, Pulvirenti A, Buscemi MD, et al. · Open Medicine · 2025 · doi.org/10.1515/med-2025-1141Peer-reviewed
4. Heavy Metal contamination of Dietary Supplements products available in the UAE markets and the associated riskJairoun AA, Shahwan M, and Zyoud SH · Scientific Reports · 2020 · doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-76000-wPeer-reviewed

Sources

Source records associated with this topic. Inclusion does not establish that every finding applies to this product or ingredient. References above identify works cited in the text.

Update history

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