The Food and Drug Administration said in a safety warning Wednesday that it identified additional cinnamon products in the U.S. that are contaminated with lead.
The ground cinnamon products found to contain lead are: La Fiesta, from La Superior SuperMercados; Marcum, from Save A Lot; MK, from SF Supermarket; Swad, from Patel Brothers; Supreme Tradition, from Dollar Tree & Family Dollar; and Eli Chilar, from La Joya Morelense.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Dollar Tree said it has removed all Supreme Tradition ground cinnamon products from its stores nationwide.
"We take this situation very seriously," the spokesperson said. The other retailers didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
People shouldn’t eat, sell or serve the ground cinnamon products and should throw them out, the FDA said. The products have a long shelf life, it noted.
No illnesses or adverse events have been reported.
An analysis by the FDA found the six products had elevated lead levels from 2.03 to 3.4 parts per million. The FDA has set limits for lead levels only in certain foods; spices aren't among them. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has a proposed international safety standard of 2.5 parts per million for spices that include cinnamon.
Lead exposure can be harmful to both children and adults, but high levels of lead can be especially dangerous for children, potentially leading to serious health issues, such as learning and behavior problems and lower IQs, the FDA said. Other problems can include damage to the brain and the nervous system and issues with hearing and speech, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The warning comes after the recall of lead-contaminated cinnamon applesauce pouches from the Florida-based company WanaBana USA. The CDC said that as of Feb. 23, it had received 468 reports of confirmed, suspected and probable cases of lead poisoning linked to the pouches from 44 states. Many of the people sickened were young children.
The agency has said cinnamon was the most likely source of the lead contamination in the applesauce pouches. After that recall, the FDA set out to sample ground cinnamon products from discount stores for lead contamination.
An FDA spokesperson told NBC News Thursday that the agency had no reason to suspect the cinnamon in the products in the new safety warning is the same cinnamon that was found in the WanaBana pouches.
That ground cinnamon, which was supplied by the Ecuadorian company Negasmart, contained far higher lead levels, from 2,270 ppm to 5,110 ppm, the spokesperson said.
Brian Ronholm, the director of food policy for Consumer Reports, a nonprofit group that researches the safety of the food system, called the FDA's warning "alarming."
"It demonstrates that the problem is more pervasive than we might believe," he said.
