'When they initially studied this process, [Patricia] Stathatou and [Christos] Athanasiou found that yeast can effectively and rapidly remove trace lead — at challenging initial concentrations below one part per million — from drinking water. Conventional water treatment methods either fail to eliminate lead at these low levels or result in high financial and environmental costs to do so.'
Pres Biden promises safe water to NC residents by replacing lead pipes:
The Biden admin announced that it'll start distributing $3B to communities across the country to replace up to 1.7M on lead pipes. The allotment is the latest round of money promised under the bipartisan INFRA law, which is scheduled to dole out $15B to states over 5 years to update the country’s aged INFRA & eliminate lead service pipes. There's no safe level of exposure to #lead-.
WA becomes first state to limit lead content in metal cookware | kgw.com
"In May of last year, the KING 5 Investigators purchased three traditional Afghan pressure cookers from #Amazon and #Etsy. That was nearly a year after King County researchers first warned that the cookers – manufactured and marketing in Afghanistan as an aluminum product – had high amounts of lead in some of the metals using in the forging process.
Lab testing showed the cookers KING 5 purchased were made with as much as 34,000 parts per million lead, which can leach into food while cooking.
The new law restricts #lead content in cookware to five parts per million. Meaning, the cookers KING 5 purchased had as much as 6,800 times the amount of lead that will be allowable when the law goes into effect Jan. 1, 2026."
"Consumer Reports (CR), a consumer advocacy group, said it tested 12 store-bought versions of Lunchables — which are made by Kraft Heinz — along with similar lunch and snack kits and found “relatively high levels of lead and cadmium” in the Lunchables kits...There is not a safe level of lead for children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes."
After high levels of lead was found in baby food last fall, sickening dozens of children, officials last month warned they are still finding the heavy metal in some powdered cinnamon products and urged the public to avoid certain brands. Most of the world moved to eradicate lead from nearly all products by the 1990s, so why do we keep finding the toxic element? Vox takes a deep dive into the issue, exploring why it remains a problem and who is most at risk.
The Andean city of La Oroya, situated in a high-altitude valley at 3,750 meters (12,300 feet), is home to a heavy metal smelter that has poisoned residents and the environment for almost a century. In 2006, La Oroya residents sued the Peruvian government at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for allowing the company...
@garry There's also the link between leaded petrol and crime.
"Lead changes who we are," she says. "If you wanted to say, Jessica, I don't believe that story, then my answer is that you need to come up with another story that would explain why we have found this particular pattern to lead in the 1970s and 80s and then crime in the 1990s and 2000s."
Hundreds of American children were poisoned last year. Records show how, time and again, the contamination went unnoticed across borders.
by Will FitzgibbonandChristina Jewett
February 27, 2024
"Cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches sold in grocery and dollar stores last year poisoned hundreds of American children with extremely high doses of lead, leaving anxious parents to watch for signs of brain damage, developmental delays and seizures.
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, citing Ecuadorian investigators, said a spice grinder was likely responsible for the contamination and said the quick recall of three million applesauce pouches protected the food supply.
"But hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Examination, in collaborations with The New York Times and El Universo, along with interviews with government and company officials in multiple countries, show that in the weeks and months before the recall, the tainted applesauce sailed through a series of checkpoints in a food safety system meant to protect American consumers.
"The documents and interviews offer the clearest accounting to date of the most widespread toxic exposure in food marketed to young children in decades. Children in 44 states ate the tainted applesauce, some of which contained lead at extraordinarily high levels.
"Time and again, the tainted #cinnamon went untested and undiscovered, the result of an overstretched FDA and a food safety law that gives companies, at home and abroad, wide latitude on what toxins to look for and whether to test.
"'It’s amazing in a bad sense what a catastrophic failure this was,' said Neal Fortin, director of the Institute for Food Laws and Regulations at Michigan State University. 'Largely, the food supply regulatory system is based on an honor system.'
"The cinnamon originated in #SriLanka and was shipped to #Ecuador, where it was ground into a powder. It was probably there, the FDA has said, that the cinnamon was likely contaminated with #LeadChromate, a powder that is sometimes illegally used to tint or bulk up spices.
"The ground cinnamon was then sold, bagged and sold again to a company called #Austrofood, which blended it into applesauce and shipped pouches to the United States. It was sold under the brand name #WanaBana and various generic store labels.
"Austrofood never tested the cinnamon or its tainted applesauce before shipping it to the United States. The company said it relied on a certificate from a supplier saying the cinnamon was virtually lead free, records show. In a statement, the supplier, Negasmart, did not discuss that certification but said it had complied with all regulations and quality standards.
"The FDA can inspect overseas food companies that ship to the United States, but even as food imports soared to record levels in 2022, international inspections fell far short of targets set by law.
"American inspectors had not visited Austrofood in five years, records show.
"'Companies have the responsibility to take steps to assure that the products they manufacture are not contaminated with unsafe levels of heavy metals,' Jim Jones, the top FDA food official, said in a statement. 'The agency’s job is to help the industry comply and hold those who evade these requirements accountable, as appropriate.'
"The FDA says it has no authority to investigate far down the international supply chain. Records show that the Ecuadorian government had the authority but not the capacity. Ecuadorian regulators had never before tested cinnamon for toxins and, when the FDA called looking for help, nearly half of the government’s lab equipment was out of service, said Daniel Sánchez, the head of Ecuador’s food safety agency.
"Private safety audits commissioned by American importers are supposed to provide another layer of protection. But audits typically look only for the hazards that the importers themselves have identified.
"None of the importers would say whether they considered lead a risk or tested for it and it is unclear what, if any, steps they took. But none blocked the applesauce. Records show one auditor gave the applesauce maker an A+ safety rating in December, as American children were being poisoned.
"The FDA has the power to test food arriving at the border. There is no indication that anyone tested the applesauce when it arrived at ports in Miami and Baltimore. Inspectors conduct about half as many such tests as they did a decade ago.
"The FDA said it planned to analyze the incident and whether it needs to seek new powers from Congress to prevent future outbreaks."
One doctor said Ayden would ‘come around.’ Another diagnosed him with autism and ADHD. What his parents didn’t know was that their once bubbly child disappeared into a looming darkness right in their home and lead poisoning was likely to blame. (via MLK50: Justice through Journalism)
Today, I'm bringing you part one of an excerpt from Chapter 14 of The Bezzle, my next novel, which drops on Feb 20. It's an ice-cold revenge technothriller starring Martin Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant specialized in high-tech fraud:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
"Look what these wonderful ideas did to our house... Asbestos worked the miracle. J-M Asbestos Roofing Shingles and J-M Asbestos Siding Shingles. Charming as weathered wood; fire-, weather- and wear-proof."
The EPA under Joe Biden announced it is lowering screening levels and strengthening guidance for investigating residential #lead contamination in soil.
It’s being cut in half and made even lower at residential properties with multiple sources of lead exposure.
President Carter signed CERCLA (Superfund) into law in 1980. Trump tried to destroy it as late as February 2020.
Does anyone have a nice landscape photo of some lead type, in a drawer or set for printing, that I could use in an article at bl.ag about lead-based paints?
My email is sam@bl.ag, or I can download from a reply on here if Mastodon doesn't compress things too much...
🎹 Witness Andres Blanco's mastery as he weaves sonic miracles with the AX73 synthesizer's 'Arp Bass & Lead' Factory preset, using his Kurzweil as a MIDI keyboard. 🎶✨
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says they have received 64 reports from over 20 states of children potentially falling ill from high levels of lead in now-recalled food pouches since October. Preliminary investigations are pointing to cinnamon from Ecuador as the likely source of the contamination found in WanaBana and Schnucks brands. Read more from USA Today.
Millions of Americans drink water coming from lead pipes, the Environmental Protection Agency says, causing heart disease and high blood pressure in adults and diminished IQ scores in children. The Biden administration is creating new rules that will force most cities to replace their pipes containing lead within the next 10 years. Read more from the Associated Press about the challenges the effort may face.
Rights court condemns Peru over one of world's most polluted towns (www.rfi.fr)
The Andean city of La Oroya, situated in a high-altitude valley at 3,750 meters (12,300 feet), is home to a heavy metal smelter that has poisoned residents and the environment for almost a century. In 2006, La Oroya residents sued the Peruvian government at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for allowing the company...