Tabletop exercises are one of the most effective ways to prepare for a food safety or employee health crisis. In a guided, scenario-based session, your team will clarify roles, identify gaps, and build confidence handling real-world issues.
Already included for ZHH clients - or available as a standalone service - we’ll customize the scenario to your business and deliver an engaging in-person or virtual event.
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Overall, lead exposure has dropped dramatically since the 1970s, especially in kids, who are most at risk. That’s thanks to stronger regulations and public health measures.
Testing has changed, too. In 2021, CDC lowered the “reference value” for blood lead levels in children, meaning results that were once considered normal now trigger follow-up. FDA has also updated its testing methods and tightened thresholds, especially for high-risk or child-focused foods like ground spices and fruit pouches.
Lately, we’ve seen high profile clusters, not a broad trend. Most notably, 566 cases were linked to cinnamon applesauce pouches that may have been intentionally altered for economic reasons. Since then, the FDA has found more imported cinnamon with high lead levels through their monitoring program.
And just this week, Consumer Reports published their tests on 23 adult protein supplements and found lead in many of them - including a few with high levels. Lead can occur naturally in the environment and through pollution, and it can build up in plants if they’re in soil that’s contaminated, which makes plant-based products more vulnerable. That said, only repeated high risk exposure is of serious concern for most adults.
Overall, the new use of lead has declined significantly in manufacturing, and our exposure is declining on the whole. That said, there is still some risk, especially as plant-based products are on the rise. Our globally connected supply chain adds complications and increases the risk of one-off clusters happening
Right now, we don’t think there’s any action needed from employers or reason to panic, but it’s something to keep an eye on as an unintended consequence of the protein and plant-based crazes that have swept the food industry.
Sources: Consumer Reports, CDC, MMWR, Food Safety, FDA, NPR
Some vaccines do contain aluminum salts, but it’s one of the most studied ingredients in vaccines, and there’s plenty of evidence that it’s safe and actually very helpful for mounting an immune response.
It’s in the news because President Trump recently raised concerns about it in a press conference, so the FDA has begun to look into the feasibility of removing aluminum salts from vaccines.
Aluminum salts are used in some vaccines to encourage a more robust immune response and boost the effectiveness of the shot. In very large doses, aluminum can cause health issues, but the amount in vaccines is minuscule compared to what we breathe from dust or come into contact with in food. A single slice of American cheese has 10x the amount of aluminum than all the vaccines a baby has in their first 6 months.
There’s no evidence of any link with autism and aluminum in vaccines, or childhood vaccines themselves. There has been one small U.S. study that found a potential link between aluminum in vaccines and increased childhood asthma, but it had limitations, and a much larger Danish study found no such result. There have been hundreds of studies proving the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. Since they’re proven to save lives from much more dangerous things (think polio), most pediatricians agree that one single study showing a potential link to asthma rates isn’t enough to justify delaying or skipping shots at this point.
Experts are worried about this push to remove aluminum salts from vaccines because it would mean about half of the U.S. supply of childhood vaccines would be gone - including shots for polio, whooping cough, and flu (which has been particularly deadly for kids this year). Whether
Overall, the studies show that childhood vaccines, and the aluminum in many of them, are safe and effective. On top of that, they all go through clinical trials and then are continuously monitored by the CDC and FDA to watch for any issues. Any changes to remove them would probably not affect safety one way or the other, but they would disrupt the supply chain and continue to erode trust in vaccines.
If the FDA votes not to recommend vaccines that contain aluminum, we can expect a further decline in vaccine coverage for kids and the subsequent increase of vaccine-preventable diseases in your employee base over the years.
For a breath of fresh air (forgive us), we liked this article about a new approach to school discipline: