United States: US health officials have issued a warning that several kinds of ground cinnamon sold at discounted prices at specialty grocery stores contain a high quantity of lead and must not be consumed.
More about the news
This would be the third alert of the year by the Food and Drug Administration, in which a minimum of ten types of packaged ground cinnamon were sold from popular outlets such as Dollar Tree, Patel Brothers, and Eurogrocery stores in various states of the US.
The FDA has asked for the products’ recall; however, in the meantime, customers are urged to discard or avoid buying those ground cinnamon products, as AP News reported.
As per the agency, no report of illnesses connected with the product has been noted so far.
More about the FDA-issued alert
FDA alerted about the names of the brands of cinnamon products: El Chilar, Marcum, SWAD, Supreme Tradition, Compania Indillor Orientale, ALB Flavor, Shahzada, Spice Class, and La Frontera.
Additionally, on July 25, the agency issued an alert for El Servidor brand cinnamon, following another alert on March 6.
Level of contaminations as agency reveal
As the state programs are running tests, followed by an FDA confirmation, found levels of lead that ranged from a little over two parts per million to about seven parts per million in most of the spices.
Moreover, the El Servidor brand was found to be contaminated by 20 parts per million level concentration of lead.
However, this level of concentration is much lower than the 2,000 to 5,000 parts per million found in ground cinnamon in pouches of the brand WanaBana and other cinnamon apple puree products, leading to sickness in more than five hundred children in the US last year.
According to AP News, presently, the FDA has prescribed no safer limit for heavy metals in spices. However, regulatory bodies do have set a limit of one part per million of lead in candies, which are likely to be consumed by small children.
There are several groups, such as the American Spice Trade Association, an industry trade group that is calling to set the limit to not more than two parts per million of lead in bark spices, such as cinnamon.