3 ms·

It’s all explained here: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-for

It’s all explained here: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...

robocat 4y ago
Matt says ‘According to Healthy Babies Bright Futures, baby formula made by the big guys in the U.S. is full of dangerous brain-altering heavy metals. HBBF tested thirteen different baby formulas, and every single one had “detectable levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead and/or mercury,” which are all considered to be neurotoxic, interfering with brain development and “causing permanent IQ reductions in children.”’. Rather unscientific heavy breathing about heavy metals, since some level must exist in all foods. Matt even links to a mommyhood101.com article in the above, which I guess is the secondary source for his opinion? The question is: what are reasonable limits to exposure for babies? For example, what are the EU limits for baby formula? Here is the original “paper”: https://www.healthybabyfood.org/sites/healthybabyfoods.org/files/2019-10/BabyFoodReport_FULLREPORT_ENGLISH_R5b.pdf https://www.healthybabyfood.org/sites/healthybabyfoods.org/f... Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF) paid laboratories to measure amounts, but superficially their analysis looks rather poor I think. Any good links to scientific critiques of their analysis?
- mherdeg 4y ago
  > The question is: what are reasonable limits to exposure for babies? For example, what are the EU limits for baby formula? Maybe the question I'd ask is "if you sample milk from 100 different human volunteers, what fraction of the samples also contain detectable levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead and/or mercury?" I do think that doing analysis of household chemicals and publishing the results is a great idea. A consumer-testing company did some great ad-hoc analysis of sunscreens and found higher-than-acceptable levels of benzene, leading to widespread recalls, which I thought was awesome: https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-benzene-in-sunscreen https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-.... Still confused about how they plan to make money from this (maybe they could lobby the government to mandate that labs like theirs must do testing on certain consumer products?). Also still confused about this led to regulatory action against them: https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/valisure-found-benzene-in-products-fda-inspected-lab-a7872407447/ https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/valisure-foun.... Some people in this space publish consumer advisory articles saying "we measured <X> in <Y> and found some <X>" and don't list a safe PPM, or their reasoning, and it's very tough to know what to do with this information. There's often extraordinarily little evidence about how much <X> is bad for you and sometimes we only get the evidence years after people have had hunches that it's not so good. (trans fats? https://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8793937/why-fda-banned-trans-fats https://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8793937/why-fda-banned-trans-f... ) So it's tough to know what to do when the pesticide-in-food people publish an analysis which "does not incorporate risk assessment into the calculations. All pesticides are weighted equally, and we do not factor in the levels deemed acceptable by the EPA." (https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php). I guess this is one reason to have a doctor and a pediatrician you trust -- because part of their job is to sift through the latest available information and have reasonable heuristics about safety and risks.
  - CrHn3 4y ago
    The AAP and CDC agree that there are no safe levels of lead for children. > Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. [1] Human milk contains varying amounts relative to the producer's diet and exposure. It seems that the mean is in line with the formula's on Healthy Babies Bright Future's report on page 23. The upper range is concerning, especially considering that those impacted are already most likely to be in an environment with high heavy metal exposure. > The World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that the mean and range of these toxic metals detected in breast milk around the world are: Pb (Lead) 5.0 ppb (0.0-41.1 ppb), Hg (Mercury) 2.7 ppb (0.64-257.1 ppb), and Cd (Cadmium) 0.1 ppb (0.1-3.8 ppb) [2] My pediatrician minimized my concerns about heavy metal exposure through food until after the Congressional oversight hearing and encouraged me to avoid use of rice cereal. The information was out there, but she was following AAP recommendations on diet. I was really grateful for the publication by Healthy Babies Bright Futures. In the beginning, I was buying organic and newer brands, but realized Gerber generally had lower heavy metal concentrations in their samples when compared to competitors. 1. https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/lead-exposure/ https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/lead-exposure/ 2. https://jpnim.com/index.php/jpnim/article/download/040223/314#:~:text=The%20World%20Health%20Organization%20(WHO,3.8%20ppb)%20%5B12%5D https://jpnim.com/index.php/jpnim/article/download/040223/31....
    - mherdeg 4y ago
      Did you consider finding another pediatrician whose view of the data better align with yours? There is a whole bunch of stuff that has changed over time -- for example the fairly recent view that evidence now weakly supports swim lessons at a young age to prevent drowning -- and I really don't know how to keep up with this, other than by talking to a bunch of friends who are MDs and tracking their own choices vs. the data I see.

It’s all explained here: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...

robocat 4y ago

Matt says ‘According to Healthy Babies Bright Futures, baby formula made by the big guys in the U.S. is full of dangerous brain-altering heavy metals. HBBF tested thirteen different baby formulas, and every single one had “detectable levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead and/or mercury,” which are all considered to be neurotoxic, interfering with brain development and “causing permanent IQ reductions in children.”’. Rather unscientific heavy breathing about heavy metals, since some level must exist in all foods. Matt even links to a mommyhood101.com article in the above, which I guess is the secondary source for his opinion? The question is: what are reasonable limits to exposure for babies? For example, what are the EU limits for baby formula? Here is the original “paper”: https://www.healthybabyfood.org/sites/healthybabyfoods.org/files/2019-10/BabyFoodReport_FULLREPORT_ENGLISH_R5b.pdf https://www.healthybabyfood.org/sites/healthybabyfoods.org/f... Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF) paid laboratories to measure amounts, but superficially their analysis looks rather poor I think. Any good links to scientific critiques of their analysis?

mherdeg 4y ago
> The question is: what are reasonable limits to exposure for babies? For example, what are the EU limits for baby formula? Maybe the question I'd ask is "if you sample milk from 100 different human volunteers, what fraction of the samples also contain detectable levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead and/or mercury?" I do think that doing analysis of household chemicals and publishing the results is a great idea. A consumer-testing company did some great ad-hoc analysis of sunscreens and found higher-than-acceptable levels of benzene, leading to widespread recalls, which I thought was awesome: https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-benzene-in-sunscreen https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-.... Still confused about how they plan to make money from this (maybe they could lobby the government to mandate that labs like theirs must do testing on certain consumer products?). Also still confused about this led to regulatory action against them: https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/valisure-found-benzene-in-products-fda-inspected-lab-a7872407447/ https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/valisure-foun.... Some people in this space publish consumer advisory articles saying "we measured <X> in <Y> and found some <X>" and don't list a safe PPM, or their reasoning, and it's very tough to know what to do with this information. There's often extraordinarily little evidence about how much <X> is bad for you and sometimes we only get the evidence years after people have had hunches that it's not so good. (trans fats? https://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8793937/why-fda-banned-trans-fats https://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8793937/why-fda-banned-trans-f... ) So it's tough to know what to do when the pesticide-in-food people publish an analysis which "does not incorporate risk assessment into the calculations. All pesticides are weighted equally, and we do not factor in the levels deemed acceptable by the EPA." (https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php). I guess this is one reason to have a doctor and a pediatrician you trust -- because part of their job is to sift through the latest available information and have reasonable heuristics about safety and risks.
- CrHn3 4y ago
  The AAP and CDC agree that there are no safe levels of lead for children. > Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. [1] Human milk contains varying amounts relative to the producer's diet and exposure. It seems that the mean is in line with the formula's on Healthy Babies Bright Future's report on page 23. The upper range is concerning, especially considering that those impacted are already most likely to be in an environment with high heavy metal exposure. > The World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that the mean and range of these toxic metals detected in breast milk around the world are: Pb (Lead) 5.0 ppb (0.0-41.1 ppb), Hg (Mercury) 2.7 ppb (0.64-257.1 ppb), and Cd (Cadmium) 0.1 ppb (0.1-3.8 ppb) [2] My pediatrician minimized my concerns about heavy metal exposure through food until after the Congressional oversight hearing and encouraged me to avoid use of rice cereal. The information was out there, but she was following AAP recommendations on diet. I was really grateful for the publication by Healthy Babies Bright Futures. In the beginning, I was buying organic and newer brands, but realized Gerber generally had lower heavy metal concentrations in their samples when compared to competitors. 1. https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/lead-exposure/ https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/lead-exposure/ 2. https://jpnim.com/index.php/jpnim/article/download/040223/314#:~:text=The%20World%20Health%20Organization%20(WHO,3.8%20ppb)%20%5B12%5D https://jpnim.com/index.php/jpnim/article/download/040223/31....
  - mherdeg 4y ago
    Did you consider finding another pediatrician whose view of the data better align with yours? There is a whole bunch of stuff that has changed over time -- for example the fairly recent view that evidence now weakly supports swim lessons at a young age to prevent drowning -- and I really don't know how to keep up with this, other than by talking to a bunch of friends who are MDs and tracking their own choices vs. the data I see.