Plant Milks, Soy-Based
This page is HMTc Category 5 row 6. It is no longer a pure scaffold: the row has early finished-product occurrence evidence, but the evidence is still insufficient for HMTc threshold-setting.
Heavy Metal Index pages are written for several audiences at once. Each entry point below names where to start if you are reading this page with a specific question in mind.
- Brand legal and regulatory affairs
- Cherry-pick attack vectors on soy-based plant milks typically center on cadmium uptake by the soy crop. Geographic and growing-region context are the defensive core. Compare with Plant Milks Non Soy Non Rice for the within-pair sibling. The cited sources at the bottom of this page are the citations list, written to be quoted into a Daubert brief without further editing.
- Retailer quality and compliance
- The Federal / Regulatory Limits vs Field Findings section compares the applicable regulatory cap to cited field evidence on a like-for-like basis, with basis conversion shown when conversion is well-defined and a methodology anchor when speciation differs. The Literature Evidence Summary gives source count and confidence rating per analyte.
- Brand QA and product development
- Use the Lab Result Comparator to position a single lab value inside the cited literature. The comparator positions a single lab value inside the cited literature for soy-based plant milks.
- Regulators, journalists, and adversarial readers
- Every numeric claim on this page traces to a source page. The Evidence Governance note explains what this page is and is not (literature evidence, not HMT&C certification thresholds).
- HMT&C staff (internal)
- The threshold-selection arithmetic (percentile statistics, clean / dirty subcategory designation, CC eligibility) lives on the staff workbench snapshot at plant-milks-soy-based, not on this public page.
| Field | Status |
|---|---|
| Row state | Early occurrence evidence promoted |
| Best current source | milani2023-trace-elements-soy-based-beverages |
| Support source | marques2021-trace-elements-milks-plant-based-drinks |
| Computation readiness | Context-ready for Al, Ni, Pb, Cd, Sn, Cr, Sb; not threshold-ready |
| Ingredient routing | plant-milk, soy |
| HMTc use | Occurrence prioritization only; no certified-brand, compliance, or threshold claim |
Federal / Regulatory Limits vs Field Findings
This is the fast comparison view for standards developers, regulators, retailers, brands, and legal teams. It shows the applicable federal or regulatory limit next to the current field-evidence state. It is not an HMTc pass/fail table; technical distributions remain in the evidence sections below.
| Metal | Federal / regulatory limit | Actual field finding | Decision read | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| aluminum (Al) | No federal product-specific limit loaded in this crosswalk. | Milani 2023: Al means 758, 609, and 176 ug/L by soy source; max range endpoint 1822 ug/L. | Occurrence evidence only. Do not infer a federal exceedance or HMTc pass/fail result from this row. | milani2023-trace-elements-soy-based-beverages |
| arsenic-total (tAs); cadmium (Cd); lead (Pb); tin (Sn) | No federal/product-specific limit loaded yet. Source-cited non-U.S. thresholds require direct legal-source, unit, basis, and species review. | tAs <38.2 ug/L; Cd <3.8 ug/L; Pb mostly <10.9 ug/L with soybean group mean 2.2 ug/L; Sn <18 ug/L except isolate mean 4.3 ug/L. | No compliance read yet. Load the direct legal text before using this row in regulatory or litigation analysis. | milani2023-trace-elements-soy-based-beverages |
| Cr-total; Sb | No federal product-specific limit loaded in this crosswalk. | Milani 2023: Cr isolate mean 1.8 ug/L with range <10.9-11.0; hydrosoluble and soybean groups <10.9 ug/L. Sb means 6.2, 2.5, and 12 ug/L with range endpoints up to 61 ug/L. | Occurrence evidence only. Do not infer a federal exceedance or HMTc pass/fail result from this row. | milani2023-trace-elements-soy-based-beverages |
Occurrence Evidence
milani2023-trace-elements-soy-based-beverages analyzed 18 soy-based beverages from Brazil by ICP-OES. The paper is directly relevant to this product row because it measures finished soy beverages rather than soy ingredient powders or isolated soy raw materials.
Milani reports chromium as total/unspecified Cr and antimony as Sb in the finished beverage groups. Those values are useful occurrence context, but they are not Cr-VI evidence, not a compliance determination, and not an HMTc threshold input.
marques2021-trace-elements-milks-plant-based-drinks measured Spanish retail plant-based drinks and supports the broader row architecture, but it does not resolve the Al/Cd/iAs gaps for this row.
Ingredient Handling
Ingredient-only values belong on soy or plant-milk. Milani’s values are finished beverage values, so they remain here and in the structured occurrence data layer.
Literature Evidence Summary
The table below summarizes what the peer-reviewed and government literature cited on this page reports for heavy-metal concentrations in soy-based product. 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.
| Analyte | Subcategory | Reported concentration range | Detection rate | Applicable regulatory cap | Sources | Confidence | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Al | soy-based (no contributing evidence loaded) | No concentration data loaded for this analyte | Sample-level detection rate not reported | No applicable cap loaded | 0 | data gap | Basis not reported |
| Ni | soy-based (no contributing evidence loaded) | No concentration data loaded for this analyte | Sample-level detection rate not reported | No applicable cap loaded | 0 | data gap | Basis not reported |
| Cd | soy-based (no contributing evidence loaded) | No concentration data loaded for this analyte | Sample-level detection rate not reported | No applicable cap loaded | 0 | data gap | Basis not reported |
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 | Milani et al. 2023. Trace Elements in Soy-Based Beverages: A Comprehensive Study of Total Content and In Vitro Bioaccessibility, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 2023 | Peer-reviewed | ICP-OES measurement of Al, tAs, Cd, Cr, Ni, Pb, Sb, and Sn in 18 Brazilian soy-based beverages by soy-source group; primary multi-metal occurrence source for the soy plant-milk row (Al group means 176–758 µg/L; most others <LOQ) |
| 2 | Marques et al. 2021. Essential and Non-essential Trace Elements in Milks and Plant-Based Drinks, Biological Trace Element Research | 2021 | Peer-reviewed | ICP-MS survey of Pb, tHg, Ni, and U in retail plant-based drinks from Spain including soy drink; tHg not detected; provides multi-metal occurrence context and Ni comparison for the soy plant-milk row |
CC candidate evidence map
| Analyte | Distribution sources (sample-level) | Summary sources | Total source count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pb | — | Milani 2023 (group means; mostly <LOQ), Marques 2021 (n=42 plant-drinks) | 2 summary |
| Cd | — | Milani 2023 (all <LOQ; Path B candidate at 5×LOQ=19 ppb) | 1 summary (Path B) |
| tAs | — | Milani 2023 (all <LOQ; Path B candidate at 5×LOQ=191 ppb; high ICP-OES LOQ) | 1 summary (Path B) |
| iAs | — | — | 0 (Milani measured tAs only) |
| MeHg | — | — | 0 |
| tHg | — | Marques 2021 (not detected) | 1 summary |
| Al | — | Milani 2023 (group means 176-758 ppb; range 45-1822 ppb) | 1 summary (Path A thin; closing requires 2nd Al source) |
| Ni | — | Milani 2023 (soybean group mean 29 ppb), Marques 2021 | 2 summary |
| Cr-VI | — | inference-cascade only (Hernandez/Saraiva chemistry; milk-like matrix) | 1 cascade |
| Sn | — | Milani 2023 (isolate-protein group mean 4.3 ppb at LOD-zero; max 26 ppb; Path B candidate at 5×LOQ=90 ppb) | 1 summary (Path B) |