Heavy metals in milk infant formulas

Overview

Kuznetsova and colleagues measured copper, zinc, and lead in seven dry milk infant-formula products labeled for infants from 6 months to 1 year. The study is direct powdered-formula occurrence evidence, but the paper reports product-level results by named commercial formula. Under the brand firewall, this page preserves only the category-level range and exceedance signal.

The source does not measure mercury or methylmercury despite appearing in a methylmercury research-pull folder.

Key numbers

All concentrations are reported by the source in mg/kg for dry formula.

The paper’s abstract also cites maximum levels from Russian scientists for newborn milk as Pb 0.02 mg/kg, Cd 0.02 mg/kg, and As 0.05 mg/kg; cadmium and arsenic were not measured in the seven-sample formula panel.

Category-level findings from Tables 1-7:

Methods (brief)

The authors tested dry milk formula products using emission spectral analysis for rapid lead detection and atomic absorption spectroscopy for microelement determination. The method section states that 100-200 g portions were burned according to GOST 26929-86, with lead lines at lambda = 283.31 nm and lambda = 405.78 nm and comparison lines at lambda = 282.4 nm, 408.0 nm, and a doublet at 404.4 nm and 404.6 nm. The method-development work lowered detection limits relative to prior use of ISP-28 and ISP-30 spectrographs, and the authors state that the same approach can be applied to zinc and copper.

Microelements in milk were determined by atomic absorption spectroscopy using a Saturn-2 spectrophotometer after spraying the mineralized sample solution in air-acetylene flame. The paper describes calibration by solutions with known concentrations. Porcelain dishes and utensils were used during mixture and sample preparation to avoid contact with lead-containing glass.

Implications

This source contributes small-panel occurrence evidence for Pb, Cu, and Zn in follow-on powdered milk infant formula. It is most useful as a geographically mixed, non-US formula contamination signal and as method context for rapid lead detection in formula ash.

The source does not distinguish soy-based from non-soy formula in the HMTc row system, so it should remain broad powdered-formula context until row fit is resolved. The measured lead values are total lead in dry product; no basis conversion to prepared formula is made here. The source does not measure cadmium, arsenic, total mercury, methylmercury, or chromium species.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• Infant Formula Powder
• Milk and Dairy
• Lead
• Copper
• Zinc

Verification notes

• Identity check: DOI 10.15673/fst.v13i3.1476, raw handle RPMEHG_10-15673-fst-v13i3-1476, candidate cite-key kuznetsova2019-milk-infant-formulas-heavy-metals, and SHA-256 47464cad14e973ae73ba061c3cf1bc702f4a970bb9f3cb338cd23c93676006ef were searched before creation; no existing clean post-2026-05-14 source page was found.
• Full-PDF read performed from the seven-page journal PDF. Tables 1-7 were checked once from pdftotext -layout and a second time against rendered page images before commit.
• Brand firewall: the source’s named commercial formula table is not reproduced. The page reports only category-level ranges and counts.
• HMTc firewall: page records source facts only; no certification threshold, percentile, or pass/fail calculation is derived from this source.

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.