FDA Releases Alert on Lead in Certain Brands of Cinnamon

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is urging people to not consume some cinnamon products due to unsafe levels of lead and throw them away instead.

Through product testing by state programs and confirmed by the FDA, the agency determined that 11 ground cinnamon products contain elevated levels of lead and that exposure to these products may be unsafe.

The FDA is updating the alert below with an additional product, Super Brand ground cinnamon, that contains elevated levels of lead. The samples were collected at a retail establishment by the Arkansas Department of Health and reviewed by the FDA. Exposure to this product may be unsafe. Please view the table and recommendations below for more details.

August 30, 2024

The FDA is continuing to review sample results received from state partners who have been continuously sampling ground cinnamon at retail establishments for elevated levels of lead. We are updating this alert with an additional product, Asli brand ground cinnamon, that contains elevated levels of lead. Exposure to this product may be unsafe. Please view the table and recommendations below for more details.

Product

Through product testing by state programs and confirmed by the FDA, the FDA has determined that the ground cinnamon products listed in the table below contain elevated levels of lead and that exposure to these products may be unsafe. The FDA is advising consumers to throw away and not to buy these ground cinnamon products.

The FDA has recommended that the firms voluntarily recall these products. The FDA will update this notice with the communications from firms that voluntarily agree to recall as we receive them.

Recommendations for Consumers

The FDA is advising consumers to stop using and dispose of the ground cinnamon products listed in the table above.

Consumers should not eat, sell, or serve ground cinnamon products listed in the table above and should discard them.

These products have a long shelf life. Consumers should check their homes and discard these products.

If there’s suspicion that someone has been exposed to elevated levels of lead, talk to your healthcare provider. Most people have no obvious immediate symptoms of lead exposure.

Consumers who have symptoms should contact their health care provider to report their symptoms and receive care. To report a complaint or adverse event (illness or serious allergic reaction), visit Industry and Consumer Assistance.

Potential Health Effects

Based on FDA’s assessment, consuming these products could contribute to elevated levels of lead in the blood. Long-term exposure (months to years) to elevated levels of lead in the diet could contribute to adverse health effects, particularly for the portion of the population that may already have elevated blood lead levels from other exposures to lead. If you are concerned that you or anyone in your family may have symptoms of lead toxicity, the FDA recommends you contact your healthcare provider.

The potential for adverse health effects from consuming food contaminated with lead vary depending on the level of lead in the food; age of the consumer; length, amount, and frequency of exposure to lead in the food; and other exposures to different sources of lead. For example, the very young are particularly vulnerable to the potential harmful effects from lead exposure because of their smaller body sizes and rapid metabolism and growth. High levels of exposure to lead in utero, infancy, and early childhood can lead to neurological effects such as learning disabilities, behavior difficulties, and lowered IQ.

Good nutrition – like meeting the recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans – can help protect against the health effects from exposure to lead. Eating a variety of healthy foods can make it less likely for an individual to be exposed to the same contaminant from the same food many times and helps to provide the range of nutrients needed for health and, for children, healthy development. Having adequate nutrients stored in the body also can help to prevent lead from having harmful effects. To get adequate food variety, FDA recommends that consumers eat many different foods from the five food groups – vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy, and protein foods – and to alternate how often you provide the same food.

The FDA is advising consumers to throw away and not to buy the ground cinnamon products listed above because samples of these products were found to contain elevated levels of lead. Based on the FDA’s assessment, prolonged exposure to these products may be unsafe and could contribute to elevated levels of lead in the blood. No illnesses or adverse events have been reported to date in association with these products.

While the ground cinnamon products in this alert may not be a food targeted to young children, cinnamon is used in many foods young children consume. Consistent with the agency’s Closer to Zero initiative, which focuses on reducing childhood exposure to lead, the agency is recommending voluntary recall of the products listed above because prolonged exposure to the products may be unsafe. Removing the ground cinnamon products in this alert from the market will prevent them from contributing elevated amounts of lead to the diets of children.

In this third alert, the FDA is recommending recalls of 11 brands of ground cinnamon products with elevated lead levels ranging from 2.03 to 7.68 parts per million (ppm) (see table above for a full list of lead levels in these products). These levels are significantly lower than the levels of lead associated with the WanaBana cinnamon apple puree and applesauce products recalled in the fall of 2023, which had between 2,270 ppm to 5,110 ppm lead in the cinnamon.

During the last year, prior to the recall of WanaBana apple puree and applesauce products containing elevated levels of lead and chromium, the FDA asked states to prioritize testing of ground cinnamon and other spices. Following the FDA’s targeted assessment of ground cinnamon products for lead and chromium and the FDA public health alert issued earlier this year, several states provided the FDA with data for samples of ground cinnamon. This is a cooperative agreement with states to help investigate, monitor and remove adulterated foods from commerce and aid regulatory programs. Arkansas, California, Maryland, Missouri, Connecticut, and Virginia collected ground cinnamon samples through the LFFM, in addition to samples collected outside the LFFM from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, all included in this public health alert.

The FDA continues to work with states to test cinnamon sold directly to consumers at retail and to test cinnamon at import. The FDA will continue our activities at import to prevent unsafe cinnamon from reaching consumers in the U.S., including adding firms and products to import alert where appropriate.

The FDA will continue to work with firms to ensure they are meeting their responsibilities under provisions of the Current Good Manufacturing Practice, Hazard Analysis, and Risk-Based Preventive Controls for Human Food rule.

The FDA is also continuing its Toxic Elements monitoring program, which includes testing of a variety of foods, including colored spices offered for sale in the U.S. In addition to sampling, as part of the FY2025 Legislative proposal, the FDA is seeking to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) to expressly require industry to conduct testing of final products, including those marketed for consumption by infants and young children, for contaminants and maintain such records of these testing results for FDA inspection.

Other brands in this recall include:

Asli

El Chilar

Marcum

SWAD

Supreme Tradition

Super Brand

Compania Indillor Orientale

ALB Flavor

Shahzada

Spice Class

La Frontera