Cassava Testing: Otto’s Naturals Multi-Purpose Cassava Flour Tested for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury & Arsenic

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!

Affiliate link to the test kit used by Lead Safe Mama, LLC for the laboratory food test results we publish:
https://amzn.to/3UIPcHP

The chart below is from the United States’ baby food regulatory standards proposed in 2021:

May 11, 2024 — Saturday
Section #1) Context & Background for This Testing

1. WHY: Lead Safe Mama, LLC is coordinating this testing — and making the test results available to the public, free of charge (not behind a paywall of any kind) — as part of our ongoing work in the areas of Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and Consumer Goods Safety. Learn more about Lead Safe Mama, LLC at this link.
2. URGENCY/ UNSAFE PRODUCT: Given the extremely high level of Lead found in this product, and therefore our responsibility as an advocacy organization to make this information available to the public as quickly as possible rather than incur any delay by waiting to write-up a comprehensive detailed article, we have decided to quickly go ahead and publish this (alongside other test results from this May 2024 labratory testing batch) as a preliminary article — with the warning graphic (above) and the full laboratory test results for this product (image below). Also check out our bulleted list below, outlining key points related to these test results so that Lead Safe Mama community members (and members of the general public) have immediate access to this important information, helping them protect their families.
3. BATCH TWO: This cassava flour testing is one in a group of eight products we tested as part of Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s second batch of laboratory testing in 2024.
   • We will be writing a comprehensive article discussing (comparatively) the test results for this second batch of products shortly, and will link that here once it has been published.
   • “Batch Two” consisted of eight products — all either flour, or flour-based food.
   • To read the article, which discusses our first batch of laboratory testing in 2024 (in which we tested six flour-based snack products), click here.
   • Additionally (in the meantime, pending publishing our overview article about Batch Two), if you would like more general background information about this issue of Lead-contamination in Cassava flours and Cassava flour-based products (as well as alternative [Cassava-free] suggestions for feeding your children), please also read the overview article for the first batch of testing (linked in the above point) for that information. That article also discusses how/ why we selected the particular products we chose to test.
4. WHAT YOU CAN DO: As a companion piece to our first article, we also wrote a fairly comprehensive follow-up piece discussing what you can — and ideally, should — do if you have been feeding any of these heavily-Lead-contaminated foods to your children. You can read that article here.
5. OVERVIEW of the concern for high-Lead (Paleo/GF) diets: Back in 2023 we wrote an overview article discussing a specific case study for a family we worked with who was eating a diet full of high-Lead foods, and you can read that here (for more context into this work).
6. FUTURE TESTING: Lead Safe Mama, LLC plans on continuing to coordinate independent laboratory testing with batches of concerning products on a monthly basis, through the summer (2024) — so please stay tuned for when we release those additional test results.
   • If you want to be among the first to see those test results as soon as they are published, please subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free). Here’s the link to subscribe.
   • To see all the articles related to food testing that Lead Safe Mama, LLC has completed to date, click here.
7. COST OF TESTING: Accurate quantitative testing of food items — or any substance intended to be ingested — requires laboratory testing methodologies (the only means of performing accurate quantitative testing for metallic toxicants down to single digit parts per billion [ppb] levels — vs. XRF technology, which accurately detects down to parts per million [ppm] levels). For context: 1 ppm is equal to 1,000 ppb.
   • Laboratory testing is a relatively expensive undertaking — and consequently, most consumers do not have the funding available to pay to have it done themselves.
   • Given the high cost, Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s capacity to conduct such testing is also limited.
   • For the laboratory testing we are doing this year (2024), the lab we are using (GoSimpleLab.com) has generously agreed to donate some testing (providing a limited amount of testing each month to Lead Safe Mama, LLC pro bono). 
   • As Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s access to this testing is limited at this stage, we are prioritizing testing products based on input from our online community to make sure the test results for these first selected batches (and analysis of the test results) are useful to the greatest number of people.
     • Given our limited access to testing, we are specifically selecting products that (based on our experience and knowledge) we anticipate will test positive for unsafe levels of one or more heavy metals — but which the manufacturer has either not tested or has tested but refuses to make their results available to the public.
     • We are choosing these products both to help discover (or in some cases, confirm some prior-suspected) “hidden” or “mysterious” sources of Lead poisoning for families who have been searching for an unidentified source of exposure — and also, so the Lead Safe Mama community can put pressure on these companies to recall contaminated products and/or clean-up/ reformulate these products.
   • If your family is fortunate to have the financial resources that cover the cost of testing some specific food(s) you consume in your home, and you would like to send some samples to a lab for testing yourself, you can purchase the same test kits we are using here, at this link (each test kit is for one single food item).
8.  TESTING CONSIDERATIONS:
   • Lead Safe Mama, LLC is purchasing the products for testing directly (from Amazon, direct from the company, or from local grocery stores in Portland, Oregon).
   • Lead Safe Mama, LLC is sending products to the lab “blind”
     • The samples are submitted to the lab without any details about the products (ingredients, brands, product names, or any other descriptive information).
     • Each sample is identified only by an internal Lead Safe Mama identification code that we assign to it.
   • We are filming the sample collection process for each batch of samples submitted for testing so that we have evidence should any of the companies attempt to challenge the test results.
   • We are also saving the packaging (and when relevant, the unused portion of the product), in the event we need that information as evidence should any of the companies whose products we are testing attempt to challenge our results.

Amazon links are affiliate links. If you purchase something after clicking on one of Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s affiliate links, we may receive a small percentage of what you spend at no extra cost to you.

Section #2) Important key points about the lab testing report below

• The product tested for this article (image at the top of the page) was Otto’s Naturals Multi-Purpose Cassava Flour.
• The product tested was purchased on Amazon in April, 2024.
• The product was tested in May, 2024.
• The test result for Lead was 212 parts per billion (ppb).
• Per the chart above, the scientific/ medical community recommendation is that infants and toddlers should not eat foods with a level of 5 ppb Lead or higher.
• All federal agencies agree there is no “safe” level of Lead exposure for human beings (and especially for children).
• A reminder, to counter the fallacious arguments made by those who manufacture, sell, or promote these products: While some of the Lead contamination for this product may be “naturally-occurring” — for example, a plant’s absorption of Lead from contaminated soil (which is arguably really not a “natural” source of Lead), and some of the Lead-contamination may also be from the processing of the plant(s) to turn them into flour — even “naturally-occurring” Lead is bioavailable and unsafe for consumption. The food-industry contention that Lead is allegedly “naturally occurring,” and/or “unavoidable,” and therefore somehow not concerning is simply dangerous misinformation.
• The product tested was “negative” for Arsenic, with a low threshold of detection for that test of 20 ppb (this means it may contain Arsenic at a level as high as 19 ppb).
• The product tested was “negative” for Cadmium, with a low threshold of detection for that test of 10 ppb (this means it may contain Cadmium at a level as high as 9 ppb).
• The product tested was “negative” for Mercury, with a low threshold of detection for that test of 5 ppb (this means it may contain Mercury at a level as high as 4 ppb).
• It is especially egregious that this product is “Autism Approved,” given the well established fact that Lead exposure in children often generates symptomatic expressions often confused with (and misdiagnosed as) Autism. You can read more about that here.

Section #3) Full Test Report for Otto’s Naturals Multi-Purpose Cassava Flour: