Lead in My Vitamins???

Update: Please see my new post My Search for Lead-Free Prenatal Vitamins

Last week, the day after I wrote A Vitamin a Day, I read this post on vitamins at Z Recommends.  So naturally, I checked the FDA report, and there were my prenatals!!  The levels of lead were very low, but I freaked, just a bit.  I emailed Rainbow Light and simply asked “Can you please tell me why there is lead in my prenatal vitamin?”  Below is their response:

Update on Lead August 29, 2008

Rainbow Light regularly conducts tests on our products to ascertain that any naturally occurring lead levels are within the legal limitations. Rainbow Light uses botanical materials with the lowest detectable lead level available on the market. Using strict testing methods, and after allowable exclusions for naturally occurring lead, as described in detail below,  Rainbow Light products have all been found to be below the No Observed Effect Level (safety level), and well within safety limits for health.

In early 2007, FDA became aware of reports of elevated lead levels in certain vitamins, which became an issue of concern to FDA, Congress, and the public. A survey was conducted to determine the content of lead (Pb) in vitamins labeled for women and children and results were subsequently published in Journal of Agricultural and Food chemistry in July 2008 and on the FDA website in August 2008. Because the results were overall quite good, there has been little media coverage on this survey. None of the levels ended up exceeding FDA’s PTTI (provisional total tolerable intake levels) for lead; the highest came out to less than half that.  Some products listed did not appear to meet the Prop65 standard which might be a concern for labeling in CA, but is nowhere close to a public health concern.

The FDA has estimated that the safe daily intake of “lead” from all sources is 750 mcg for most adults, and 250 mcg for pregnant women. This means that most adults can be exposed to 750 mcg of lead per day, and no harm would be expected. However, the state of California’s Proposition 65, the most stringent law on this topic, has established a lower No Observed Effect Level (safety level) of 500 mcg of lead per day. Further, California’s Prop 65 imposes an extremely low limit of .5 mcg per day (one-thousandth of the 500 mcg No Observed Effect Level) as a per serving limit for food and dietary supplement products.

“Lead” is a naturally occurring mineral, found in the water, soil, air, as well as many everyday foods and botanicals.  Because there is a range of naturally occurring lead levels found in our foods, allowances are made for these separate from the strict California legal limits set above. For example, the USP acceptable level of naturally occurring lead in a daily serving of calcium is 4.5 mcg. An FDA analysis also acknowledges food products like fresh spinach with 2.4 mcg of lead per serving, canned spinach with 8.5 mcg per serving, and a glass of wine with about 7.7 mcg of lead.

Manufacturers of dietary supplements are allowed to exclude naturally occurring lead amounts from the above stated legal limits of Prop 65. The amount of lead that can be excluded depends on the type of consumer product.  There is a precedent California Court Case(2005, Case No. CGC-04-429563) that defines the naturally occurring lead limits for a wide range of botanical sources. The naturally occurring allowance for lead in the botanical products subject to the litigation was set at 3.5 mcg per daily serving. This means that, under the terms of the final consent agreement, a botanical dietary supplement product could conceivably have a lead content level of 3.5 mcg, plus the legal allowance of .5, for a total of 4 mcg per daily serving, and still not require a warning statement on the label in the state of California.

So, it seems there was no need for me to freak after all.  I had thought about naturally occurring lead, and that seems to be all it is.    For now, I’ll continue taking my Rainbow Light Prenatal One.  If your vitamin is on the report, I encourage you to email the manufacturer and ask them why.

Some other good articles covering this subject:

http://www.greendaily.com/2008/08/29/fda-finds-lead-in-vitamins/

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/lead-vitamins-082803