United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
United States (federal) · Reference — blood-lead biomonitoring value, not a food limit · Established 1946 · Authored by Karen Pendergrass, Institute for Contaminant Standards · www.cdc.gov
Quick read
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not set food limits. Its relevant heavy-metal value is the blood lead reference value (currently 3.5 µg/dL) — a biomonitoring benchmark that identifies children with higher lead exposure than most, based on the 97.5th percentile of US children’s blood lead. It marks elevated exposure for follow-up; CDC is explicit that no blood lead level is safe.
Mandate & scope
The CDC is the US national public-health agency; in heavy metals its role is surveillance and biomonitoring, not food regulation. It sets no maximum levels for metals in food — which is why this profile carries no instruments — but it maintains the blood lead reference value used nationwide to identify children with elevated lead exposure. The value, lowered to 3.5 µg/dL in 2021, is defined statistically as the 97.5th percentile of blood lead among US children aged 1–5, so it shifts downward as population exposure falls; it triggers case management and environmental investigation, not a finding of safety. CDC states unequivocally that no safe blood lead level in children has been identified. Its biomonitoring program (NHANES) is also the empirical backbone of US exposure assessment. For food-side limits on lead, see FDA and the lead page.
Positions across metals
No food-limit instruments for this body are tracked in the index. See Mandate & scope for what this body does set.
Where it diverges
CDC sets no food limits, so it does not diverge from the food-limit bodies on the table above — it operates on a different axis. Where FDA, the EU, and Codex regulate concentrations in food, CDC measures the result in the body: the blood lead reference value is an outcome benchmark, not an exposure limit. The two are complementary — food limits aim to keep exposure down; the blood lead reference value reveals whether they are working.
No tracked positions to compare.
Update log
No dated regulatory events tracked for this body.
Key documents
No source documents are linked to this body’s instruments yet.
References
Positions, the update log, and key documents above are generated from the per-instrument regulation pages this body issues, via tools/build-regulator-pages.mjs. The wiki reports what CDC has published; it does not endorse it. See HMTc separation policy for why reporting regulatory values is kept architecturally separate from certification threshold-setting.