Overview
This is a category risk profile assembled from the ingredients that drive it. It does not test products, name brands, or publish brand-by-brand tables. The metals that govern it, in the routed corpus, are Lead and Cadmium.
Evidence summary
The table below summarizes what the peer-reviewed and government literature cited on this page reports for heavy-metal concentrations in non-root vegetable vegetable juice. Values are pulled directly from cited sources without re-aggregation. This page publishes literature evidence only, not certification thresholds.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| lead (Pb) | non-root vegetable (no contributing evidence loaded) | No concentration data loaded for this analyte | Sample-level detection rate not reported | FDA 2022 Draft — Lead Action Levels for Juice: 20 ppb (single-strength ready-to-drink juice) | 0 | data gap | Basis not reported |
| cadmium (Cd) | non-root vegetable (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 |
Source Evidence Inventory
Hand-curated section. Populated by the synthesis pass as sources contribute.
Supporting evidence and scope
Pending: regenerated by tools/evidence/apply-product-broad-context.mjs once broad-scope sources route to this page.
Limits applicable to this category
The category inherits the maximum levels and action levels that apply to it. These are regulatory limits, not certification thresholds.
| Instrument | Metal | Value | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| FDA 2022 Draft — Lead Action Levels for Juice | Lead | 20 µg/kg | Guidance |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lead lead (Pb) | FDA 2022 Draft — Lead Action Levels for Juice: Federal FDA draft level, not final: 20 ug/kg Pb. Scope: other single-strength juices and juice blends. Basis: single-strength ready-to-drink juice. | No comparable field-finding row has been promoted yet for this beverage category. | Draft context only. Do not present this value as a final federal limit or an HMTc threshold. | FDA 2022 Draft — Lead Action Levels for Juice |
Ingredient drivers
The inputs below are ordered by their share of the routed occurrence evidence for the metal each drives; the bar shows relative position within this category, not a comparison against any limit.
Leading lead driver among this category's routed inputs — p95 200 ppb, 38 sources, high confidence.
Controls and mitigation
Cat 5 beverage regulatory enforcement covers the FDA Juice HACCP framework (FDA 2004) and 2022 draft Pb-in-juice action levels (FDA 2022) for fruit-juice products, plus EU Reg. 2023/915 Pb-in-juice maximum levels at 30 ppb. The 2019 Mateel Environmental v. Welch Foods California Prop 65 settlement specifically established practical compliance thresholds for grape and other juice products. Tea-and-coffee enforcement is principally California Prop 65 with documented enforcement actions on tea products from Asian importers. Individual brand recall actions are not enumerated here.
Testing and verification posture
Occurrence values in this category are measured by ICP-MS in the source literature, the same method the FDA Toxic Elements Program uses for the survey data behind its action levels.
Where third-party testing programs are cited as sources, the category-level signal is summarized and the reader is pointed at the original document for anything brand-specific. The Index does not reproduce brand-by-brand tables.
Decision Snapshot
| Field | Status |
|---|---|
| Row state | Locked row node; structured occurrence extraction started |
| Category hub | Category 5: Beverages |
| Crosswalk hub | Regulatory Crosswalk vs Field Findings |
| HMTc use | Routing and evidence-gap tracking only; not a certification threshold |
Evidence Handling
Finished-product findings belong on this product page. Ingredient-only findings belong on ingredient pages before they are used for product inference.
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
Cat 5 beverage regulatory enforcement covers the FDA Juice HACCP framework (FDA 2004) and 2022 draft Pb-in-juice action levels (FDA 2022) for fruit-juice products, plus EU Reg. 2023/915 Pb-in-juice maximum levels at 30 ppb. The 2019 Mateel Environmental v. Welch Foods California Prop 65 settlement specifically established practical compliance thresholds for grape and other juice products. Tea-and-coffee enforcement is principally California Prop 65 with documented enforcement actions on tea products from Asian importers. Individual brand recall actions are not enumerated here.
Methodology
Pending. This section will state the speciation, basis-preservation, row-fit, and pooling rules that govern downstream sections of 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.
- Juice HACCP Hazards and Controls Guidance, First Edition — Lead in JuiceGuidance
- Draft Guidance for Industry: Action Levels for Lead in JuiceGuidance
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.
| # | Citation | Year | Type | Used on this page for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dhawale et al. 2025. Benzidine-Based Chemosensors for Copper and Mercury Detection in Vegetable Juice | 2025 | Peer-reviewed | tHg occurrence in Vegetable juice samples used as food matrix validation |
| 2 | Grochowska-Niedworok et al. 2020. Assessment of cadmium and lead content in tomatoes and tomato products, Roczniki Państwowego Zakładu Higieny (Annals of the National Institute of Hygiene) | 2020 | Peer-reviewed | PL/EU Pb, Cd occurrence in Fresh and processed tomato products purchased in Polish retail and local markets; variety includes conventional, organic, multiple varieties,… (n=25) |
Pending. The brand-legal, retailer-compliance, HMTc-internal, and regulator audiences are listed; this section will frame what each is looking for on this page.
Update history
No substantive edit history is available in this build. The full commit record is available in git.