Lead and cadmium found in muscle-building protein powders, report says
85 comments
·January 12, 2025martinpw
lithos
More along the lines of avoiding lawsuits. Supplement companies sue the fuck out of everyone, since the competition is so steep for essentially selling nothing/waste products/similar (penny production to dollar margins).
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/07/18/supplement-maker-sues...
OutOfHere
The lawsuits angle is nonsense since there are other sites that list various tested levels.
loeg
It's definitely in promotion of their certification, yeah.
chemeng
The charitable reading is that this was done as a blinded study, so the testers/researchers would not know and would prevent bias in the testing and data analysis.
There should be a way to unblind in most experiment designs though
peterbecich
Promoting the certification would explain concealing the offending products. If CleanLabel reveals, it will discourage other companies from getting the certification. A lead test should be required by law i.m.o.
dsp_person
How much does testing cost? Curious about my protein powder.
This would be cool as a crowd funded thing with publicly shared results of various products.
nine_k
If it were a report of a dangerous software bug, the discovering team would first contact the affected vendor, have it patched, and then report the details.
I could imagine this being done to the powder producers, so they could pull the affected products before a huge PR backlash. Were it the case though, they likely would mention that.
jchw
For a software exploit the reason why "responsible disclosure" exists is that once the exploit is known, it can be used against innocent parties running unpatched software. No obvious such impetus exists for faulty or dangerous supplements, and in fact I'd argue it's absolutely the opposite, it would be much more likely to reach the people who are currently being hurt by this if the product SKUs impacted were known.
hunter-gatherer
I agree, as someone who literally just drank a chocolate flavored whey protein shake 10 minutes before reading this.
Taek
Responsible disclosure is about harm minimization. If you tell the world about an exploit, now there are thousands of hackers who have been informed about ways they can harm innocent people.
You should only openly disclose a found vulnerability if there's a good chance its already being widely used.
But, lead in a food product? You aren't protecting innocent people by hiding the culprit. You don't have thousands of hackers who are going to run around spiking peoples drinks with lead contaminated protein powder.
No excuses for this behavior. If you find lead in a product people are ingesting, you need to tell the world all of the details. Otherwise you are a bad actor.
loeg
> No excuses for this behavior. If you find lead in a product people are ingesting, you need to tell the world all of the details. Otherwise you are a bad actor.
The only real defense for Clean Label's behavior here is that the lead levels found are too low to be harmful, so it's not like people are being harmed by their lack of disclosure. (Still a bad actor, but because they're trying to shake down brands, not because they're abetting poisoning consumers.)
meindnoch
Wtf? Responsible disclosure is definitely NOT about avoiding PR backlash.
summeroflove20
[dead]
AlexErrant
The Clean Label Project did an AMA on Reddit, and people raised issues regarding their reporting, methodology, and data.
I see they haven't learned anything in the intervening 7 years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/64mpty/we_are_the_cle...
chefandy
Based on that and this article, it looks like they learned that people writing news stories on them either don't read or don't care about Reddit AMAs.
likeabatterycar
They did an exposé on solvent use in decaf coffee and listed Peet's Coffee (a local SF brand) as having traces of methylene chloride. Yet Peet's claims to only use the Swiss Water (or similar) process to produce their decaf, possibly as of a few years ago. It's possible they changed the process after the tests were done.
The study looked dated but wasn't presented as such, and didn't caveat it with any updates. It's hard to know if Peet's changed their ways in response to the report, and if that was the case I think a disclosure is warranted.
In the end I was presented with conflicting information and didn't know who to believe. Was the data old? Was it a false positive? Did Peet's decaffeination supplier pull a fast one and was secretly using a cheaper method? (Nearly all decaffeination is outsourced.)
More info here:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2024/05/...
The Clean Label Project, a nonprofit that fights for food labeling transparency, found that several popular coffee brands including Kirkland Signature, Kroger, Maxwell House and Peet's Coffee included traces of methylene chloride, a liquid sometimes used for paint stripping that in large doses can cause a slew of health issues. (A representative for Peet's told USA TODAY the brand switched to a different means of decaffeination more than two years ago.)
kurthr
It's interesting that in the main study this is based on (for metals rather than BPA etc) they state both that the average results are dominated by outliers and that,
"As a whole, products in later cohorts (2016, 2019, 2022) demonstrated lower
concentrations of all heavy metals tested as compared with those in 2014, with
significantly lower concentrations of lead documented between the years 2022
vs. 2014 and the years 2019 vs. 2014."
It's not that surprising that the lowest cost "flavoring" cocoa would be contaminated, but for high priced chocolates not to know their suppliers would be more surprising.
dTal
The issue is that the cocoa plant itself absorbs heavy metals from the ground like nobody's business. It's hard to get lead-free chocolate, full stop - no irresponsible supplier required.
loeg
Not the first time this kind of reporting has surfaced; not the first time from this same organization, either.
Same org, 2018: https://cleanlabelproject.org/protein-powder-infographic/
Consumer Reports, 2010: https://www.consumerreports.org/media-room/press-releases/20...
Toxicology reports, 2020: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7509468/
> The data in the current study suggest that heavy metal exposure via protein powder supplement ingestion does not pose an increased non-carcinogenic risk to human health. Further, no carcinogenic risk was expected from As via ingestion of protein powder supplements. This study demonstrates that health risks of heavy metals in protein powder supplements should be conducted within the context of relevant background exposures and established health based standards instead of the presence of hazardous substances alone.
Something similar in India, 2024: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10994440/
RobotToaster
It should be noted that the report says they sourced many of them from amazon, who are notorious for having sellers who sell counterfeit supplements and cosmetics. They also co-mingle inventory, putting all units of a product from multiple sellers into one "bucket", so even if you buy a product from an official store on there it can be fake.
cjoelrun
Some resources I've used: https://www.consumerlab.com/ https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/pages/coas#certs
airstrike
I love how blueprint's olive oil is actually called "snake oil" https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/cdn/shop/files/EVOOfront....
lr4444lr
+1 for ConsumerLab.
It's almost embarrassing how many products they test and how lucid their write-ups as compared with the FDA given their respective budgets.
buu700
I use PlantFusion in my pre/post-workout protein shakes (in combination with Transparent Labs whey protein isolate and a couple different types of collagen powder), and this was one of the reasons I liked it: https://plantfusion.com/pages/faq
IS PLANTFUSION TESTED FOR HEAVY METALS?
Yes, we do indeed do third party testing on all our PlantFusion products. There’s been a whole lot of attention lately on heavy metals in nutritional supplements. Particularly those products on the market containing brown rice and/or brown rice syrup. In the early development of PlantFusion, we found through our own research and testing that brown rice protein typically had levels of certain heavy metals (namely lead, arsenic and cadmium) that were many times higher than our other plant protein sources. Because of this, and a few other factors, we opted to take brown rice out of all of our formulas and continue to test for heavy metals within our products to ensure safety and efficacy.
swatcoder
While that's more reassuring than no statement at all, I'd suggest keeping in mind that claims and actions don't always align and that leadership changes -- as when a startup folds in new investors or gets sold whiledale -- can and do exploit exactly the kind of trust you're investing here.
What you like about a small brand like this today could change tomorrow, or could have already changed in way that someone conveniently "forgot" to reflect on the website.
Everybody's got their own standards for risk tolerance and due diligence, but in historically shady markets like nutritional supplements and growth-chasing startups, soft skepticism and ongoing vigilance have some place.
buu700
Yeah, it's not definitive, but was nice to see it addressed at all. GPT mostly corroborates their basic claim at least, with the caveat that one of the five protein sources in use (algae) can be high-risk depending on where it was sourced from. I would of course much prefer if they published a certificate of analysis for each batch.
teaearlgraycold
> GPT mostly corroborates their basic claim at least
What exactly did you ask it?
cgh
You were right to be concerned. From the article:
"Plant-based protein powders were the most contaminated, containing five times more cadmium than their whey-based counterparts."
jpmattia
It raises the question: Where are things like arsenic and cadmium coming from? Is it in the brown rice to begin with? If so, why?
hollerith
Plants must extract nutrients from the soil. An important such nutrient is phosphorus. Because arsenic is chemically similar to phosphorus, any arsenic in the soil will get extracted also, ending up in the plant. The soil in Louisiana and Arkansas, which is good for growing rice, happens to be high in (naturally-occurring) arsenic.
andhuman
Important to note is that when arsenic is in rice, a lot of it is organic arsenic and therefore not easily picked up by the body like inorganic arsenic.
SoftTalker
Pollution, and depending on location it could be from naturally occurring deposits.
null
dehrmann
$38 per pound for protein powder?
buu700
Looks like I'm paying $16.57/lb for PlantFusion on Amazon and $27.27/lb for Transparent Labs on their website. I didn't find any better keto-friendly options without artificial sweeteners, but it's not a massive expense all things considered.
Edit: Ah, yeah, I see that the PlantFusion website charges $38/lb. (Less than that if you buy bigger packages and subscribe, but still more than Amazon.) Not sure what the deal with that is.
sva_
> Of the products tested, a staggering 47% exceeded California Proposition 65 safety thresholds for toxic metals. Organic products, on average, showed higher levels of heavy metal contamination, with three times more lead and twice the amount of cadmium compared to non-organic products. Plant-based protein powders were particularly concerning, showing three times more lead than whey-based alternatives, and chocolate-flavored powders contained four times more lead than vanilla.
Meager report. Are they saying organic whey is more likely to have lead than non-organic whey, or is it just that organic products are more likely to be plant-based?
Chocolate... just the usual suspect I guess[0].
I'm taking away from this that non-flavored whey is probably fine.
d_burfoot
I think to be complete this report needs to compare the levels of heavy metals found in the protein powders to levels found in regular foods like peas or brown rice, since that's where the metals are coming from. Is there some reason to believe that the protein isolation process would tend to concentrate heavy metals to a higher degree than is found in the source foods?
loeg
It’s just coming from the source foods, yes, and Americans already eat these minute quantities of heavy metals on a regular basis from other sources. This paper makes some attempt to put the numbers in context: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7509468/
Lucasoato
> 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons. We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time.
baxtr
Thanks EU for 100s of hours wasted clicking stupid meaningless banners and additionally this now.
tsimionescu
This, but actually true. I'm always grateful when a site announces upfront they can't be bothered to respect my privacy, so I don't accidentally browse their content.
wjholden
Not saying you're wrong, but there is another possible reason. I often see this kind of thing on very local news websites in the USA.
I think it's possible that small-town newspapers simply doesn't believe their local news has any readership in the EU/EEA, but that there is some small chance they could be maliciously targeted for non-compliance with a faraway law.
handzhiev
Many perfectly respect your privacy but don't want to be bothered reading 100 pages vague legal document from the EU.
badgersnake
AKA we won’t run a website without selling your data.
timeon
Just flag it (probably spyware site) and move on.
jger15
interesting note regarding chocolate versus vanilla flavoring ala the dark chocolate lead/cadmium report from a few years ago:
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...
Strange that they do not actually disclose which brands have the high levels, and not sure I understand the logic in this statement:
“We do not disclose the names of companies we test in order to maintain fairness and consistency and to avoid potential conflicts of interest,” Bowen said.
Also note that later in their document (page 8) they do list brands that they certify as clean:
https://cleanlabelproject.org/wp-content/uploads/CleanLabelP...
One cynical take I read on this is that this is a way to get more companies to sign up for their certification.