There could be a toxic heavy metal lurking in your protein supplement

People everywhere use protein supplements on a daily basis. But a new report suggests some contain worrying amounts of a harmful substance

- by ANA SANTI

It's no secret that protein is big business right now. Browse the shelves of your local supermarket and you'll see just how many products tout their protein content - whether it's in natural sources, such as meat and milk, or in more processed items, like breakfast cereals and pasta.

And for anyone looking to supplement their protein intake or get it from non-animal sources - gym users or vegans, for example - there are protein powders.

But a worrying new report has identified another substance, besides protein, hiding in some of these powders: lead. Given this news, how is this substance getting into these supplements and what's it doing to you if you're using them?

LEAD LEVELS

Consumer Reports (CR), an independent nonprofit organisation based in the US that assesses the quality of consumer products, tested the makeup of 23 protein powders and shakes. Their results, published in October, were shocking. Over two-thirds of the products contained more lead in a single serving than CR's food safety experts consider safe to consume in a day.

More worrying still, a single serving of some of the products contained as much as ten times CR's dietary consumption limit.

On the face of it, these sound like extremely unsafe amounts of lead to find in a product intended for human consumption. It's worth noting, however, that CR sets its daily dietary consumption limit for lead relatively low: 0.5 micrograms (µg) per day. In contrast, the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) daily dietary consumption limit is 12.5µg per day.

Why such a huge disparity between these recommendations? "My guess is that CR uses much lower benchmark levels than the FDA because they're filling a regulatory gap," says Dr Kathrin Schilling, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, in the US.