Heavy metals in Ice cream

Overview

This provisional ingredient page records source-specific measurements for ice cream. Its population contamination profile has not been synthesized. See Ingredients for the ingredient inventory.

Heavy metal contamination profile

The profile fields remain pending until an evidence synthesis supports a population estimate. Source observations are listed separately below.

Reported measurements from source notes are below. The contamination profile on this page is still pending. No typical or upper-tail value is calculated here, and no certification limit is stated.

Reported measurements

The 2025 note reports flavored dairy from Giza, Egypt, wet weight, 15 samples per product-flavor combination. Chocolate ice cream: lead 0.051 ± 0.042 mg/kg, total arsenic 0.005 ± 0.004 mg/kg, aluminum 1.790 ± 0.777 mg/kg. Vanilla ice cream: lead 0.068 ± 0.039 mg/kg, aluminum 0.914 ± 0.307 mg/kg, antimony 0.0017 ± 0.0019 mg/kg. Chocolate antimony was not detected, and the table does not print a number, so chocolate antimony was not measured as a concentration. Vanilla total arsenic was not detected, and the table does not print a number for that row. Chocolate total arsenic is the number above. Cadmium on the ice cream rows was below the limit of detection and was not measured as a concentration (study-wide limit of detection 0.032 ppb, limit of quantification 0.106 ppb). Mercury on the ice cream rows was below the limit of detection and was not measured as a concentration (study-wide limit of detection 0.072 ppb, limit of quantification 0.237 ppb). The arsenic column is total arsenic. The authors’ comparator for lead in milk and dairy is 0.02 mg/kg. The note names exceedances in other dairy rows, not in these ice cream rows, and those other concentrations are not repeated here. Nickel and chromium figures in the note are yogurt and milk powder, not ice cream, and were not measured as an ice cream concentration. Dietary Exposure and Health Risk Assessment of Selected Toxic and Essential Metals in Various Flavored Dairy Products

The 2011 note reports one ice cream sample at 0.147 mg/kg lead, wet weight. The same sentence also reports 0.147 mg/kg lead in a rural cottage cheese. That cottage cheese figure is not an ice cream result. The four-format combined average, covering cottage cheese, maturing cheese, butter, and ice cream, is not an ice-cream-only figure and is not repeated here as an ice cream mean. Below-detection substitution in that note is the study’s convention and is not applied on this page. Noxious Elements in Milk and Milk Products in Poland

Ice cream and gut studies of lead, arsenic, aluminum, and antimony

Ice cream measurements relevant here are lead, total arsenic, aluminum, and antimony. The matching records are a tooth-lead cohort, a mouse drinking-water arsenic study, a prenatal hair study, and a mouse antimony gavage at a dose the source page calls far above dietary. A dairy should not file any of them as an ice-cream microbiome result. Freezer culture and overrun are product attributes, not gut endpoints.

Sitarik et al. 2020 measured tooth lead and stool microbiota at 1 month and 6 months in 146 maternal-child pairs in the Detroit-area WHEALS cohort. In utero tooth lead was associated with fungal community composition at 1 month. Lead was not associated with overall bacterial community structure. Taxon-level bacterial shifts were higher Collinsella at 1 month, higher Bilophila at 6 months, and lower Bacteroides. The direction is lead exposure toward microbiota composition. Tooth lead is a biomarker, not a concentration in this ingredient.

Lu et al. 2014, per WikiBiome source summary, DOI 10.1289/ehp.1307429, reported that 10 ppm arsenic in drinking water for 4 weeks perturbed gut microbiome composition in C57BL/6 mice and perturbed gut-microflora-related metabolites. The recorded abstract does not name the arsenic species. The direction is arsenic toward microbiota and metabolites. The summary does not support an arsenic concentration in this ingredient.

Xiong et al. 2025, per WikiBiome source summary, DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-60508-8, followed 146 mother-infant pairs, with maternal hair trace elements measured in 119 mothers. Shannon diversity of the infant gut at 3 months correlated positively with selenium and negatively with copper. Bifidobacterium relative abundance increased under high aluminum and high manganese together, so the note does not separate aluminum from manganese. The note states that high copper and arsenic may enrich antibiotic resistance genes. Hair concentrations are not printed. The direction is prenatal trace-element biomarkers toward the infant gut. Hair is not a food sample.

Wu et al. 2025 gavaged male C57BL/6 mice, n = 7 per group, every two days for six weeks with antimony at 10 mg/kg as potassium antimony tartrate. Beta diversity differed (p = 0.001). The source page records an internal inconsistency: alpha diversity is described as elevated in the results and as not significant in the discussion. Hepatic taurine-beta-muricholic acid was 1.5-fold higher and serum total bile acids were 1.6-fold higher in the antimony group. The direction is antimony toward gut microbiota and bile-acid metabolites. The page states that 10 mg/kg is far above a dietary dose.

Study table

What remains uncertain

Antimony at 10 mg/kg by gavage is not an ice-cream concentration, and the paper’s alpha-diversity statements conflict internally. Aluminum in hair is not separated from manganese. Arsenic species is not named in the Lu abstract record. No study cited here fed ice cream.

FDA TDS FY2018–FY2020 source observations

FDA measured the prepared foods named below. Each row describes that food and preparation, not every form of this ingredient. Values are µg/kg (ppb) on the FDA sample basis. ND means not detected; it is not a measured zero. Reporting limits can vary between composites. FY2018-FY2020 TDS Elements Analytical Results

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. Dietary Exposure and Health Risk Assessment of Selected Toxic and Essential Metals in Various Flavored Dairy ProductsIbrahim AS, Awaad SS, Shehta HA, and Hegab OW · Biological Trace Element Research · 2025 · doi.org/10.1007/s12011-025-04676-0Peer-reviewed
2. Noxious Elements in Milk and Milk Products in PolandStarska K, Wojciechowska-Mazurek M, Mania M, Brulinska-Ostrowska E, Biernat U, and Karlowski K · Polish Journal of Environmental Studies · 2011Peer-reviewed
3. Fetal and early postnatal lead exposure measured in teeth associates with infant gut microbiotaSitarik AR, Arora M, Austin C, Bielak LF, Eggers S, Johnson CC, et al. · Environment International · 2020 · doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.106062Peer-reviewed
4. Arsenic Exposure Perturbs the Gut Microbiome and Its Metabolic Profile in Mice: An Integrated Metagenomics and Metabolomics AnalysisKun Lu, Ryan Phillip Abo, Katherine Ann Schlieper, Michelle E. Graffam, Stuart Levine, John S. Wishnok, et al. · Environmental Health Perspectives · 2014 · doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1307429Peer-reviewed
5. Prenatal exposure to trace elements impacts mother-infant gut microbiome, metabolome and resistome during the first year of lifeXiong S, Xie B, Yin N, Zhu H, Gao H, Xu X, et al. · Nature Communications · 2025 · doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-60508-8Peer-reviewed
6. Gut Microbiota and Its Metabolite Taurine-β-Muricholic Acid Contribute to Antimony- and/or Copper-Induced Liver InflammationDandan Wu, Qiwen Lin, Senao Hou, Xiaorui Cui, Na Shou, Xuefeng Yuan, et al. · International Journal of Molecular Sciences 26(7):3332 · 2025 · doi.org/10.3390/ijms26073332Peer-reviewed
7. FY2018-FY2020 TDS Elements Analytical ResultsU.S. Food and Drug Administration · FDA Total Diet Study · 2022 · www.fda.govDataset

Sources

Sources catalogued for this page. The last column says how each source is used here.

Update history

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