We stopped using balsamic vinegar more than 10 years ago, when we learned it tested positive for unsafe levels of Lead.

 

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For those new to the Lead Safe Mama website:

Tamara Rubin is a multiple-federal-award-winning independent advocate for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety, and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (two of her four sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005).

• Tamara owns and runs Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.
• Since July of 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for five product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
• All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
• Please check out our press page to see some of the amazing coverage of our work so far this year!

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Published: December 30, 2023

The Lead-in-Vinegar Conversation:
Some important background, for context 

We all make choices in our life. We have to decide what we can and cannot live with and which risks are risks we want to take. As a mother of children who were acutely Lead-poisoned as infants (and 18 years later — as an expert in childhood Lead poisoning who teaches classes for health departments, universities, and hospitals in Lead Poisoning Prevention), most of the choices I make for my family start with Lead (and Lead-related considerations).

Making choices each day, based on an internalized set of rules for living

A primary concern (every day in caring for my children) is… how am I protecting my children from additional exposure to Lead and other toxicants in their environment? This concern has a range of considerations that I prioritize depending on our circumstances at any given moment. Here are a few of those considerations that I have juggled just this week:

• We are away from home. The apartment we are staying in has Lead-painted barware for the drinking glasses. Simple solution: I have instructed my children not to use those.
• While we have been in this apartment, there has been construction happening in the homes adjacent to ours (outside). The buildings are stone and the stone and mortar in this neighborhood consistently tests negative for toxicants (I know because I tested several examples with my XRF instrument). The kids were concerned about Lead dust. The apartment (which is essentially a Lead-free, self-contained space) has brand new fully-sealable vinyl windows. I instructed the kids to keep the windows closed on the days when the construction is happening (more out of a concern for silica inhalation than anything else).
• The apartment is “fully furnished” including a full complement of non-stick coated aluminum pans. There is one Stainless Steel pan. We’re doing all of our cooking in the one Stainless Steel pan and have put the non-stick pans (which have very worn surface coatings) out of reach so they could not be used accidentally.
• We take our shoes off when we enter the apartment (this is so as not to track in things like dog shit, as well as potential Lead dust).
• Fundamentally, I also chose the town we are staying in because the Lead hazards are minimal and it is easy to avoid them. Public squares are made of stone, playgrounds are new, and our main outdoor activities are going for walks (on stone pathways), or going to the beach for swimming and playing music.
• In this town, the primary concern for Lead is the paint on the wooden components of buildings — and there are very few wooden components here — some doors, some window shutters. It is easy to avoid those things because our apartment has a newly-constructed door (with keyless electronic entry) so we don’t have to worry about Lead in the door (or Lead in the keys, even) when coming and going.

I share our story of considerations from this week to show how these choices are not complicated and they leave me “worry-free” in that I consciously set up an environment where I don’t have concerns for Lead-exposure for my children (even when we are traveling, and even though they are older).

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These guidelines for choices carry over to our food choices, too

To keep our lives (and bodies) as Lead-free (and metals-free) as possible (you can see my personal metals testing at this link), we also ake choices for our food (using basic rules/ guidelines) that help limit how much Lead my kids might inadvertently ingest in their diet. I have written about that extensively in other articles (and will share those links below), so I will only note some highlights here:

• As much as possible, we eat fresh, whole, raw foods (fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, etc.)
• We cook very little, and when we cook, we try to limit our cooking time (focusing on short-form minimal cooking like lightly steaming fresh vegetables, for example) and cook in the least-toxic vessels available (choosing Stainless Steel and glass, while avoiding non-stick, as noted above).
• We avoid any foods we know to be high in Lead, but we don’t obsess or worry about it. A few ways this manifests:
  • We never BUY Himalayan salt (more on that here), but if the kids accidentally buy a treat (like chips) and forget to read the package carefully and Himalayan salt is the last ingredient (or close to it), I will let them eat those if they choose to. Given how pervasive it is for packaged snack manufacturers to add Himalayan Salt to their products these days (especially natural and organic products), it is really hard to 100% avoid it.
  • We avoid sunflower seeds (you can read more about that here), but if we buy a nice healthy loaf of fresh organic bread from a bakery and it has a seed mix on the top and that seed mix includes sunflower seeds, we don’t stress over making an exception.
  • We don’t eat much chocolate anymore and we 100% avoid certain types of chocolate (dark chocolate) or certain brands with high levels of Lead and other heavy metals (Hu, for example). We might make an exception in having a treat with a little chocolate on the top as a garnish… or if we absolutely MUST have some chocolate (monthly cravings for me or whatever), we choose low-Lead options (sticking with milk chocolate, something similar, or chocolate-flavored baked goods, which have far less Lead than dark chocolate). Read more about that here.
• We avoid some foods entirely — as they are known to test positive for high levels of Lead (or other heavy metals). Some of the foods we currently avoid entirely (or nearly entirely):
  • Dark Chocolate (read more here)
  • Shellfish (read more here)
  • Maple Syrup (read more here)
  • Cassava products (read more here)
  • Balsamic Vinegar (read more below)…

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We have chosen to avoid balsamic vinegar because science supports this choice.

When we avoid a food entirely, it usually meets one or more of a few considerations:

1. The food we have chosen to avoid has been well-studied and scientifically proven to have unsafe levels of Lead
2. There are readily available Lead-free or Lead-safe alternatives for this food
3. The food is an item that we might consume quite a bit of if we didn’t have a rule to avoid it, so avoiding it (and substituting the safer alternative) is the easier choice
4. By avoiding this food, we limit our overall Lead exposure* (a fairly significantly consideration, given we otherwise might have this food item on a regular basis)

*It is important to understand that (as discussed in my film — linked here, and in this article here) our exposure to Lead creates a cumulative impact on biological structures and their function (Lead bio-mimics calcium and is absorbed by the body in place of Calcium when it is present). About 90% of the Lead we have ever been exposed to (through ingestion, inhalation, or absorption) is stored in our body (bones, organs, tissue) — and the more Lead we are exposed to, the greater the potential impact is on our health and longevity (you can read more about that here).

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Balsamic vinegar fits the profile above. Below are some relevant articles and scientific studies.

Read on for just a handful of links from 2007 through 2021 about the concern for high levels of Lead in vinegar (of which balsamic vinegar is the biggest offending category across the board). You can easily also find contradictory statements (stating the amount of Lead in vinegar is NOT unsafe), but please look at the source of those statements as they are primarily statements published by the vinegar industry (or others within the food industry), meant to deflect or diminish concern for the contamination of their products.

The most common argument used in these deflective statements is that it is “just a small amount” of Lead (which is simply not true, especially given the cumulative impact of persistent/ chronic Lead exposure on the body and brain). The main issue is that people who do consume balsamic vinegar typically consume more of it (and consume it more frequently) than the frequency and quantities used by the industry to determine/ allege safety (this is the same for the chocolate industry, btw — here’s a link with more info).

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This is the abstract from one of the studies linked below:

• 2021: Empire State Consumer Project 2021 Test Results for Vinegars (uploaded here, too)
• 2021: May 24, 2021, Food and Water Watch (citing the above testing)
• 2011: June 2011 (ResearchGate.net): Lead isotopes reveal different sources of Lead in balsamic and other vinegars
• 2011: Pubmed version of above (in the screenshot above)
• 2009: November 9, 2009, Environmental Health News (Jane Kay)
• 2007: American Laboratory, February 1, 2007, Lead in Vinegar: Determination and Possible Sources

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From the article linked above:

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Some key Points From the Above Linked Studies & Articles

• “Country of Origin” does not impact the concern for Lead in balsamic vinegar — all geographic sources appear to be impacted (by Lead contamination) equally.
• Organic vs. non-organic does not make a difference — examples of each are equally Lead-contaminated. Said another way, organic balsamic vinegars do not test positive for lower Lead levels (in general) than non-organic balsamic vinegars.
• The Lead-contamination of balsamic vinegars does not appear to originate from Lead in the soil the grapes are grown in, so it is therefore not a concern based in Lead-contaminated-pesticide usage. 
• The majority of Lead contamination in balsamic vinegars happens after the grapes have been grown. 
• The aging process of balsamic vinegars contributes the highest amounts of Lead to the finished product. This indicates that the primary source of Lead for balsamic vinegars likely comes from the equipment in which the vinegar is aged, or from other factors that are part of the aging process. (This explains why non-balsamic/ non-aged vinegars test either “negative” or very low for Lead.)

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What should YOU do with this information?

My goal with the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC is to inform and educate. I am not trying to make choices for you, cause you to worry, or make you feel bad about choices you have made for yourself and your family up until this point (you can read more about that here). I encourage you to read the science, to evaluate the science presented, and to consider the potential impacts of a certain food (or object) on your life (given the context provided by the most currently available science) — especially if that item tests positive for high levels of Lead (and even more so if it is an item you use every day).

The goal of this work is always #KnowBetterDoBetter and — especially when it comes to your children — #FirstDoNoHarm. You may choose to stop using balsamic vinegar, given that choice is well supported by science. You may choose not to avoid balsamic vinegar (because you only use it infrequently). The important thing is that you make whatever choice you make based on supporting science, knowledge, and specific intention (about all things, not just as this relates to the vinegar/ food conversation!).

My son Charlie (who has an Autism diagnosis, a severe ADHD diagnosis, and is socially-emotionally about 8 years old, even though he is biologically almost 16 years old and nearly 6 ft. 2 in. tall!) likes to/ wants to use at least some vinegar almost every single day (check out the note he left me last night before bed — at the bottom of this article!). Because Charlie has significant disabilities from being Lead-poisoned in utero (and later Lead poisoned by our home as a toddler — you can read more of his story here), I have chosen to eliminate potential daily sources of Lead from his diet entirely (to the best of my ability). To this end, I flavor his food with fresh lemon juice or lime juice whenever possible (which adds the sour flavor he craves, without using vinegar), and when I do use vinegar for his food (which I try to limit to a couple of times a week at most) I use regular (non-aged, non-balsamic) organic red wine vinegar.

Key Point: No one is judging you for making a different choice for your family. 

If you are having trouble deciding which way to go on a subject like this, engage in scientific inquiry to help support your choice:

• Get tested for Lead and get your children tested for Lead (you can read more about that here, here, and here).
• If you test positive for a Blood Lead Level (BLL) of 0.4 (micrograms of Lead per deciliter of blood) or higher (the approximate population average for women of childbearing age today), you likely have a specific source of exposure that you may want to consider identifying and eliminating.
• If you test positive for a BLL below 0.4 (and were born before 1996), you may not have concerns for Lead in your diet (or Lead in the diet of your family).
• You can read more about sources of Lead in modern diets here, here, and here.
• If you want help eliminating Lead from your system, there are foods supporting that transition (as proven by independent science) — you can read more about it here.

The choice is up to you and choices supported by science help eliminate fear, concern, and worry. It never helps to worry! (Read more about that here.) 

Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them personally as soon as I have a moment (which may take a while as I perpetually have disabled/ Lead-poisoned kiddos underfoot)!

Tamara Rubin
Owner — Lead Safe Mama, LLC
#LeadSafeMama
Mother of Lead-poisoned children

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What does “Balsamic” mean anyway?

P.S. After I read this article to my son (Avi), he — always curious about all things — was curious about the origin of the term “Balsamic.” My understanding was that it meant “spiced” or “with added herbs.” I suggested he research it and what he came up with is quite interesting, given the word can be interpreted as “curative.” Similarly to many “traditional remedies” that are used with the intention of promoting healing — and yet are heavily Lead contaminated — it appears that Balsamic Vinegar was (in part) originally created/ consumed for its alleged curative properties! Here’s what he found:

• The Italian word ‘balsamico’ from Latin (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin) balsamum (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balsamum) and from Greek (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek) βάλσαμον, bálsamon) means “balsam-like” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsam) in the sense of “restorative” or “curative“; cf. English “balm“. [2] Ultimately from the Ancient Hebrew-Phoenician “בשׂם” (bāśām or besem, IPA [baːˈɬaːm]), the name means “perfume or spice.“

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