Peanuts
Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) sold as raw, roasted, in-shell, shelled, salted, unsalted, or with seasonings. Peanut butter is a separate row (15). Contaminated row of the Row 8 / Row 9 / Row 10 triplet: peanuts are geocarpic legumes (pods develop in soil), giving direct soil contact during seed development. Chen 2022 peanut Al 64-119 mg/kg, 1-2 orders of magnitude above other legumes/nuts; Step 0E flags single-research-group finding pending second-source confirmation.
This page is a Step 0 lock scaffold for Cat 4 Row 10. 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 Peanuts 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 Peanuts 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 8 (Legumes and Pulses, Other). The categorical metal-load difference is attributable to platform ingredient(s) carrying load on Al, 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
Pending: regenerated by tools/evidence/apply-product-hmtc-evidence-summaries.mjs once sources route to this row and the pooling engine emits aggregate rows. Row 10 of the Cat 4 Step 0 lock is currently in scaffold state pending corpus routing of Cat 4 papers (892 source pages in the corpus as of 2026-05-16, ~52 of 128 Cat 4 cells have usable literature evidence occurrence data per the Pass 2 report).
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.
- 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.
- 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).
- Cultivar/varietal selection: where within-species variance is documented, low-accumulating cultivars are commercially viable.
- 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.
- Formulation levers: reduce the platform-commodity fraction of multi-ingredient products where function permits.
- 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.
- 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/peanuts.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]*.
| # | Citation | Year | Type | Used on this page for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zhang et al. 2026. Trace metal pollution and ecological effects on five crops around a typical manganese mining area in Chongqing, China, Scientific Reports | 2026 | Peer-reviewed | CN tAs, Pb, Cd, Cr, Ni occurrence in Five crop species from Xiushan County, Chongqing, adjacent to typical manganese mining and smelting area; rice n=16, maize… (n=71) |
| 2 | Ćwieląg-Drabek et al. 2025. Evaluation of Cadmium, Lead, Chromium, and Nickel Content in Various Types of Nuts: Almonds, Cashews, Hazelnuts, Peanuts, and Walnuts – Health Risk of Polish Consumers, Biological Trace Element Research | 2025 | Peer-reviewed | PL/EU Cd, Pb, Cr, Ni occurrence in Commercial nuts (almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, peanuts, walnuts) available on the Polish market (n=69) |
| 3 | Meng et al. 2023. The innovative and accurate detection of heavy metals in foods: A critical review on electrochemical sensors, Food Control | 2023 | Review | Pb, Cd, tAs, tHg, Ni, Cr occurrence in Review of electrochemical sensor literature for heavy metal detection in food matrices |
| 4 | Chen et al. 2022. Determination of macro, micro and toxic element concentrations in peanuts from main peanut producing areas of China by ICP-MS: a pilot study on the geographical characterization, RSC Advances | 2022 | Peer-reviewed | CN Pb, Cd, tAs, Cr, Ni, Al occurrence in Peanuts from 6 Chinese provinces (Jilin, Liaoning, Henan, Hebei, Guangxi, Guangdong) (n=66) |
| 5 | Masite et al. 2022. Trace Metals, Crude Protein, and TGA-FTIR Analysis of Evolved Gas Products in the Thermal Decomposition of Roasted Mopane Worms, Sweet Corn, and Peanuts, International Journal of Food Science | 2022 | Peer-reviewed | ZA tAs, Cd, Cr, Ni, Pb occurrence in Roasted mopane worms (Gonimbrasia belina), sweet corn, and peanuts purchased from South African markets (n=3) |
| 6 | EFSA 2015. Scientific Opinion on the risks to public health related to the presence of nickel in food and drinking water, EFSA Journal 2015;13(2):4002, 202 pp. | 2015 | Government report | [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.