The Food and Drug Administration said in a new alert Thursday that it has identified an additional cinnamon product sold in the U.S. that has been contaminated with lead.
The ground cinnamon, sold as El Servidor and distributed by an Elmhurst, New York, company of the same name, joins a growing list of cinnamon products identified by the FDA to contain high levels of lead. Through testing, the cinnamon was found to have elevated lead levels at 20 parts per million. While the FDA does not have limits for lead levels in spices, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has a proposed international safety standard of 2.
5 parts per million of lead for bark spices like cinnamon . The FDA asked the distributor to voluntarily recall the product. In March, the FDA warned about lead in cinnamon sold at Dollar Tree and Family Dollar and other stores.
Those products had levels of lead ranging from 2.03 to 3.4 parts per million.
One sample of cinnamon used in the previously recalled WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree was found to have 5,110 parts per million of lead. The cinnamon identified in the new alert was sold at a supermarket in New York City, although it's unclear whether it was distributed more widely. The FDA didn't respond to a request for comment.
Leigh Frame, director of integrative medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, called the new recall "alarming." " We sort of assume things are safe until proven otherwise," Fram.