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Heavy Metals in Baby Foods and Cereal Products

Source

This article reports lead and cadmium measurements in 63 baby food and cereal products.

Author Karen Pendergrass UPDATED 2026-05-27Cite this pageVersion history
Page snapshot
Cited by16 pages
Metals measured2
Evidence tierC
Year2019

Overview

This article reports lead and cadmium measurements in 63 baby food and cereal products. It is routeable for infant foods and infant cereals, but should be treated cautiously because the publication venue and metadata are weaker than standard food-contaminant journals.

Key numbers

  • The study reports 63 baby food and cereal product samples analyzed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry.
  • Overall lead concentrations varied from 0.32 to 10.64 ug/kg.
  • Overall cadmium concentrations varied from 0.3 to 10.37 ug/kg.
  • The paper states that 49.21% of samples had lead above the LOD.
  • More than 85% of samples had detectable cadmium.
  • Milk powder lead ranged from 0.85 to 7.26 ug/kg, and milk powder cadmium ranged from 0.10 to 4.75 ug/kg.
  • Table 1 reports mean cadmium values of 4.21 ug/kg for cereals, 3.71 ug/kg for cereals with fruits, 3.21 ug/kg for cereals with yoghurt, 4.40 ug/kg for cereals with milk, 1.89 ug/kg for cereals with honey, 2.92 ug/kg for cereals with rice, 1.94 ug/kg for milk powder, and 3.11 ug/kg for miscellaneous baby foods.
  • Table 2 reports mean lead values of 3.24 ug/kg for cereals, 2.47 ug/kg for cereals with fruits, 2.87 ug/kg for cereals with yoghurt, 0.63 ug/kg for cereals with milk, 1.08 ug/kg for cereals with honey, 5.71 ug/kg for cereals with rice, 1.03 ug/kg for milk powder, and 0.35 ug/kg for miscellaneous baby foods.

Methods

The paper describes digestion of homogenized samples and measurement by Shimadzu AA-6300 atomic absorption spectrophotometry.

Implications

The source contributes low-tier occurrence context for Pb and Cd in baby foods, infant cereals, and milk powder. It should not dominate synthesis when higher-quality infant-food surveys are available.

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Verification notes

The article has unusual author affiliation metadata for a contaminant paper, so evidence tier is set to C despite the presence of extractable numbers. No brand names are present in the extracted table text used here.

Update history

This page has no substantive edit history yet. Future revisions will be recorded here once the change lands in git.

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