Just in time for Valentine’s Day, legal notices were filed by a consumer watchdog group in California last week claiming that a lot of chocolate firms post warnings on the labels of their packages showing high lead and cadmium levels of their products.
According to Oakland nonprofit group As You Sow, too much exposure to lead and cadmium can lead to health issues like lowering the IQ in children and some cases of kidney damage.
However, the chocolate companies and the association representing their group are disputing the claim. They say that the worst thing that can happen is for a small amount of the cadmium and lead in their products that come from natural sources and they added that the regulators have already rejected this same dispute way back.
It can be remembered that the study on chocolates made in 2005 by Russ Flegal and his colleagues showed that lead found in chocolates didn’t come from natural resources but from the manufacturing itself.