Analytical Results for Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium, and Mercury in Food Intended for Babies and Young Children - TEP (FY2009-FY2024)

Summary

This FDA compliance-program table is an A-tier government dataset for arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury in foods intended for babies and young children from FY2009 through FY2024. It has been ingested as sample-level Category 1 evidence where the FDA baby-food category and product name can be mapped to locked HMTc product rows.

This source does not cover infant formula, fruit juice, fish-containing baby foods, or meat/poultry purees. It also does not report inorganic arsenic; the arsenic table is ingested as source-reported arsenic / total arsenic (tAs) until speciation evidence says otherwise.

Extracted Files

the structured evidence record: 1,944 parsed sample/analyte rows.
the structured evidence record: 39 row/product/analyte summary records.
the structured evidence record: 39 machine-extracted value records with prefix category1-fda-baby-food-compliance-.
the structured evidence record: source metadata record for this PDF.

Source Tables

Arsenic table: 575 samples from FY2009-FY2024.
Lead table: 598 samples from FY2009-FY2024.
Cadmium table: 576 samples from FY2009-FY2024.
Mercury table: 195 samples from FY2009-FY2024.

FDA reports that arsenic, lead, cadmium, and most mercury analyses were conducted by ICP-MS. Three early mercury rows were reported by X-ray fluorescence as NDb under a 5 ppm LOQ.

Category 1 Mapping

Rows were mapped conservatively:

FDA Dry Infant Cereals with rice named in the product description → Baby Cereals / Grain Products, Dry (Rice-Based).
FDA Dry Infant Cereals with no rice named → Baby Cereals / Grain Products, Dry (Non-Rice).
FDA Fruits → Fruit Purees as finished fruit baby-food products.
FDA Vegetables containing carrot, sweet potato, beet, or parsnip terms → Root-Vegetable Purees.
Other FDA Vegetables → Non-Root Vegetable Purees.
FDA Mixtures with rice named → Mixed Meals, Rice-Containing.
FDA Mixtures with no rice named → Mixed Meals, Non-Rice.
FDA Grain-Based Snacks with rice named → Teething & Snacks (Rice-Based), but the explicit rice-named subset is small.
FDA Grain-Based Snacks without rice named → broad snack context only; these rows are not treated as Teething & Snacks (Non-Rice) because ingredient rice status is not isolated.
FDA Yogurts/Custards/Puddings → context only; no separate locked Category 1 row exists.

Summary Highlights

The summary values below are lower-bound nearest-rank percentiles in ppb with <LOD and NDb treated as 0. They are machine-extracted and require review before standards use.

Category 1 scope	Evidence Fitness	Key lower-bound distribution signals
Baby Cereals / Grain Products, Dry (Rice-Based)	EF-2	`tAs` n=253, p50 115, p90 135, max 348; `Pb` n=256, p90 19.2, max 32; `Cd` n=252, p90 22, max 40.5; `tHg` n=64, p90 2.1, max 4.
Baby Cereals / Grain Products, Dry (Non-Rice)	EF-2 / EF-3	`tAs` n=25, p90 37.8, max 54.8; `Pb` n=25, p90 8, max 9.9; `Cd` n=25, p90 27.4, max 62.9; `tHg` n=9, all lower-bound 0.
Fruit Purees	EF-2	`tAs` n=39, p90 5.2, max 8.7; `Pb` n=44, p90 2.4, max 8; `Cd` n=39, p90 2.2, max 4; `tHg` n=14, p90 0.5, max 0.6.
Non-Root Vegetable Purees	EF-2	`tAs` n=20, p90 1, max 11; `Pb` n=29, p90 2, max 7.6; `Cd` n=22, p90 12.8, max 23.1; `tHg` n=13, p90 0, max 0.4.
Root-Vegetable Purees	EF-2	`tAs` n=54, p90 6.4, max 10.3; `Pb` n=59, p90 15.9, max 27.3; `Cd` n=54, p90 31.5, max 42; `tHg` n=25, p90 0.3, max 1.1.
Mixed Meals, Non-Rice	EF-2	`tAs` n=77, p90 5.6, max 13.6; `Pb` n=78, p90 6.8, max 13; `Cd` n=77, p90 5.2, max 44.4; `tHg` n=36, p90 0, max 0.4.
Mixed Meals, Rice-Containing	EF-3	Small rice-named mixture subset: `tAs` n=9, p90/max 28.3; `Pb` n=9, p90/max 11.6; `Cd` n=9, p90/max 7; `tHg` n=3, p90/max 0.3.
Teething & Snacks (Rice-Based)	EF-3	Explicit rice-named snack subset: `tAs` n=2, p50 96.3, p90/max 171; `Pb` n=2, p90/max 6.5; `Cd` n=2, p90/max 3.5.
Broad FDA grain-based snacks, rice status not isolated	EF-4	Context only: `tAs` n=91, p50 61, p90 224, p95 383, max 561; `Pb` n=91, p90 15, max 23.7; `Cd` n=91, p90 27, max 41; `tHg` n=28, p90 2.5, max 3.3.

LOD/LOQ Handling

The PDF gives analyte-level ranges for LOQ and LOD, not per-row usable censoring thresholds in the table text. The machine extraction therefore preserves the source-reported text (<LOD, NDb, or numeric value) and computes lower-bound distributions by substituting 0 for <LOD and NDb.

Arsenic LOQs ranged from 0.7 to 103 ppb; LODs ranged from 0.2 to 34.3 ppb.
Lead LOQs ranged from 0.2 to 100 ppb; LODs ranged from 0.1 to 33.3 ppb.
Cadmium LOQs ranged from 0.1 to 63 ppb; LODs ranged from 0.03 to 21 ppb.
Mercury LOQs ranged from 0.8 to 38.4 ppb; LODs ranged from 0.1 to 12.8 ppb for most mercury analyses.

Evidence Fitness

Direct row-fit subsets with at least 10 reconstructable sample rows are EF-2 pending review. Small rice-named subsets are EF-3. Broad grain-based snacks without isolated rice status and yogurt/custard/pudding rows are EF-4 context only.

These values do not publish or justify HMTc thresholds. They are occurrence evidence candidates for internal review and product-page synthesis under the shared evidence contract.

Limitations

Compliance-program sampling is not a market-share-weighted Total Diet Study.
As is retained as tAs / source-reported arsenic, not inorganic arsenic.
Hg is retained as total mercury, not methylmercury.
Grain-based snack product names are not enough to infer non-rice status.
The source does not cover infant formula, fruit juice, fish-containing baby foods, or meat/poultry purees.

Implications

Certification: priority A-tier occurrence dataset for Category 1 review, especially rice-based dry cereals, root-vegetable purees, and snack context.

Courses: strong example for teaching surveillance sampling, censoring, and why source analyte/speciation labels must travel with values.

App: useful for retrieval and row-specific evidence summaries after reviewed promotion; not sufficient by itself for brand ranking or ingredient-level inference.

Microbiome: no direct microbiome endpoint.

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Update history

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