FDA Lead Alerts on Ground Cinnamon (2024)

On 6 March 2024 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published a public health alert saying that its testing had found elevated levels of lead in ground cinnamon sold by six distributors, mostly through discount stores, and that it had asked the firms to recall those products voluntarily. The alert grew out of the agency’s investigation of the autumn 2023 lead poisonings linked to cinnamon in apple puree and applesauce pouches made in Ecuador. Further cinnamon alerts followed in July, August and November 2024, alongside import alerts and warning letters tied to the pouch incident.

This page reports what the FDA documents say: what the agency did and when, the lead levels it measured, the 2023 incident behind the testing, the enforcement steps of 2024, what the alerts do not do, their status as of 11 October 2026, and how they fit the agency’s other lead work. No brand, distributor or retailer is named here; the FDA alerts listed under Primary Documents carry the product tables.

What the FDA Did on 6 March 2024
The 2023 Applesauce-Pouch Lead Poisonings Behind It
What the Testing Found: Lead Levels in Ground Cinnamon
The Later 2024 Alerts: July, August and November
Enforcement in 2024: Import Alerts and Warning Letters
Why the FDA Pointed to Children: Closer to Zero
What the FDA Says About Lead and Health
What the Alerts Do Not Do
Dates and Status as of 11 October 2026
How the Alerts Fit the FDA’s Other Lead Actions
Primary Documents
Key Research Papers
Connections

1. What the FDA Did on 6 March 2024

The document is an FDA public health alert titled “FDA Alert Concerning Certain Cinnamon Products Due to Presence of Elevated Levels of Lead,” dated 6 March 2024 (its page shows content current as of 18 March 2024). It is an advisory with recall requests, not a regulation; no Federal Register document or public docket accompanies it. Its audience line reads “All consumers” and “All retailers.”

The alert states that, “through product testing, the FDA has determined that the ground cinnamon products listed in the table below contain elevated levels of lead and that prolonged exposure to these products may be unsafe.” It contained four actions:

Advice to consumers. In the FDA’s words, the agency was “advising consumers to throw away and not to buy these ground cinnamon products,” and noted that the products “have a long shelf life.”
Recall requests. The FDA recommended that the firms recall the products voluntarily. For one of the six distributors, the agency wrote that it had been “unable to reach” the firm to share its findings and request a recall.
A letter to the whole cinnamon trade. The FDA sent a letter to all cinnamon manufacturers, processors, distributors and facility operators in the United States “reminding them of the requirement to implement controls to prevent contamination from potential chemical hazards in food, including in ground cinnamon products.” The FDA ties that requirement to the Current Good Manufacturing Practice, Hazard Analysis, and Risk-Based Preventive Controls for Human Food rule (the “preventive controls” rule).
Continued import screening. The alert says sampling at import “has prevented some cinnamon with elevated lead levels from entering U.S. commerce,” while acknowledging that such monitoring covers “only … a subset” of imports, and that the FDA would add firms and products to import alerts where appropriate.

The alert also states: “No illnesses or adverse events have been reported to date in association with these products.”

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2. The 2023 Applesauce-Pouch Lead Poisonings Behind It

The FDA describes the cinnamon survey as a follow-up to an earlier event. In October 2023, the agency writes, it began investigating “reports of children with elevated blood lead levels, indicating potential acute lead toxicity.” On 28 October 2023 the FDA warned consumers not to use a brand of apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches, and its distributor agreed the same day to a voluntary recall; in November 2023, after reviewing the firm’s records, the FDA added two store-brand cinnamon applesauce pouch products to the recall notice. On 6 November 2023 the manufacturer’s apple cinnamon fruit puree products were placed on Import Alert 99-42.

The FDA’s findings about the source, as its investigation page reports them:

The ground cinnamon used in the pouches measured between 2,270 and 5,110 parts per million (ppm) of lead. (One ppm is one milligram of lead per kilogram of cinnamon.)
On 29 February 2024 the FDA reported that further analysis confirmed the lead and chromium in that cinnamon came from lead chromate, a yellow-orange pigment. The agency wrote that “historically, lead chromate has been illegally added to certain spices to increase their weight and enhance their color.”
The FDA’s “leading hypothesis” is that the event resulted from economically motivated adulteration, which it defines as occurring “when someone intentionally leaves out, takes out, or substitutes a valuable ingredient or part of a food, or when a substance is added to a food to make it appear better or of greater value.” This is the agency’s hypothesis, stated as such; it is not a court finding.
Ecuador’s regulator, the Agencia Nacional de Regulación, Control y Vigilancia Sanitaria (ARCSA), reported that a cinnamon processor in Ecuador was the likely source and was not operating, and that the unprocessed cinnamon sticks, sourced from Sri Lanka, were sampled and found to have no lead contamination.
The FDA noted that it “has limited authority over foreign ingredient suppliers who do not directly ship product to the U.S.,” because their food is processed further before export, so it could not act directly against the Ecuadorian cinnamon supplier or processor.

Case counts. The FDA’s outbreak team confirmed 90 complaints or adverse-event reports, with report dates from 17 October 2023 to 16 January 2024; confirmed complainants were aged 0 to 53 years, with a median age of one year. A confirmed complaint required a blood lead level of 3.5 micrograms per decilitre (µg/dL) or higher, measured within three months of eating the pouches. As of March 2024 the FDA had received more than 200 reports in all. The FDA’s 26 March 2024 update also relays CDC’s separate count: as of 22 March 2024, 136 confirmed, 345 probable and 38 suspected cases, 519 in total, from 44 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. The FDA notes that the two agencies use different data sources and that their numbers should not be added together.

The FDA’s investigation page lists short-term symptoms of lead exposure as headache, abdominal pain or colic, vomiting and anemia, and notes that most children show no obvious immediate symptoms. The FDA closed the outbreak investigation in April 2024 and moved to “post-incident response” work, which is where the ground-cinnamon alerts sit.

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3. What the Testing Found: Lead Levels in Ground Cinnamon

After the October 2023 recall, the FDA “initiated a targeted survey of ground cinnamon products from discount retail stores and analyzed the samples for lead and chromium.” Some states tested cinnamon too, through the Laboratory Flexible Funding Model, which the FDA describes as “a cooperative agreement with states to help investigate, monitor and remove adulterated foods from commerce.” The Maryland and Missouri Departments of Health collected samples included in the March alert.

The results, as the alert reports them:

Ground cinnamon from six distributors had lead levels from 2.03 to 3.4 ppm.
The FDA called these levels “significantly lower” than the 2,270–5,110 ppm found in the cinnamon used in the recalled pouches.
The FDA’s concern was cumulative: “prolonged exposure to these products may be unsafe and could contribute to elevated levels of lead in the blood.”

The alert does not state a numeric lead limit that the products exceeded. It bases the recall requests on the FDA’s own assessment that prolonged exposure “may be unsafe.”

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4. The Later 2024 Alerts: July, August and November

State testing continued after March, and the FDA issued further alerts during 2024:

25 July 2024 — one product at 20 ppm. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, following up on information from the New York City Department of Health, collected a ground cinnamon sample containing 20 ppm lead. The FDA recommended a voluntary recall. The agency wrote that while 20 ppm was far below the pouch cinnamon, it “considers this ground cinnamon product to be unsafe for consumption by all babies and young children.”
30 July 2024 — a third alert. The FDA recommended recalls of 11 brands of ground cinnamon with lead levels from 2.03 to 7.68 ppm, using samples collected through the Laboratory Flexible Funding Model by state programs and, outside that program, by the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.
30 August and 1 November 2024 — additions. The FDA updated the combined alert with one more product in August and another in November; the November sample was collected at a retail store by the Arkansas Department of Health.

The FDA’s post-incident page lists the states whose samples fed these alerts as California, Maryland, Missouri, Connecticut, Virginia and New York. Each alert repeats that no illnesses or adverse events had been reported in association with the listed products.

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5. Enforcement in 2024: Import Alerts and Warning Letters

Alongside the consumer alerts, the FDA’s post-incident page lists formal steps taken in 2024 in connection with the pouch incident. Under an import alert, the FDA writes, imported foods can be “detained without physical examination”; a warning letter sets out violations the FDA has found and, as the agency describes the June 2024 letter, asks the firm to respond with the specific steps it has taken to address them.

June 2024 — import alerts on the cinnamon distributor. The FDA placed the foreign distributor of the cinnamon used in the pouches on Import Alert 99-47, for products that appear to be adulterated for economic gain, after it “determined lead chromate was present in sampled cinnamon intended for production,” and on Import Alert 99-42, for products contaminated with heavy metals.
June 2024 — warning letter to a retailer. The FDA sent a warning letter to a national discount retailer because, at the time of the recall, it “failed to adequately remove recalled … apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches from its store shelves.” The FDA reports that public health officials in many states kept seeing recalled pouches on that retailer’s shelves for weeks and months, and it asked for a response within 15 days.
9 August 2024 — warning letter to the pouch manufacturer. The letter to the Ecuadorian manufacturer cites violations of the preventive-controls rule and states that the lead made the pouches adulterated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act “because they bear or contain an added poisonous or deleterious substance which may render them injurious to health.”
November and December 2024 — warning letters to three importers. These cite the Foreign Supplier Verification Program, a regulation that, in the FDA’s description, “requires that importers perform certain risk-based activities to verify that human and/or animal food they import into the U.S. has been produced in a manner that meets applicable U.S. food safety standards.”

The FDA adds that it “works on several fronts to combat economically motivated adulteration,” including signals monitoring, risk prioritization, surveillance and enforcement, and that “ultimately, it is the responsibility of the manufacturers and the importers to ensure the safety of the products entering the U.S. market.”

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6. Why the FDA Pointed to Children: Closer to Zero

The March alert explains why a spice that is not a children’s food drew a recall request: “While the ground cinnamon products in this alert may not be a food targeted to young children, cinnamon is used in many foods young children consume.” It ties the step to Closer to Zero, the FDA’s initiative “which focuses on reducing childhood exposure to lead,” and says that removing the products “will prevent them from contributing elevated amounts of lead to the diets of children.”

The July 2024 alert describes the purpose the same way, as ensuring “the safety of ground cinnamon used in foods that are frequently consumed by babies and young children.” It also records that, before the pouch recall, the FDA had asked states to prioritize testing of ground cinnamon and other spices.

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7. What the FDA Says About Lead and Health

The alerts carry the FDA’s own summary of lead’s effects. It states that “long-term exposure (months to years) to elevated levels of lead in the diet could contribute to adverse health effects, particularly for the portion of the population that may already have elevated blood lead levels from other exposures to lead.”

According to the FDA, the risk varies with the amount of lead in the food, the age of the person, the length, amount and frequency of exposure, and other sources of lead. It singles out the very young as “particularly vulnerable … because of their smaller body sizes and rapid metabolism and growth,” and states that “high levels of exposure to lead in utero, infancy, and early childhood can lead to neurological effects such as learning disabilities, behavior difficulties, and lowered IQ.” The alerts also note that “most people have no obvious immediate symptoms of lead exposure,” and the FDA recommends contacting a healthcare provider when exposure is suspected.

The alerts add a paragraph on nutrition: the FDA states that good nutrition and “adequate nutrients stored in the body also can help to prevent lead from having harmful effects,” and that eating a variety of foods makes repeated exposure to the same contaminant from the same food less likely. Background on the metal itself is on the site’s Lead page.

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8. What the Alerts Do Not Do

They set no legal lead limit. None of the 2024 cinnamon documents establishes a maximum lead level for cinnamon or any other spice. The recalls were voluntary, made at the FDA’s request.
They report no illnesses from the ground cinnamon. Each alert states that no illnesses or adverse events had been reported in association with the listed products. The poisonings described above belong to the 2023 pouch incident, where the cinnamon held hundreds to thousands of times more lead.
They do not cover all cinnamon. The alerts concern the specific products and lots in their tables. During the pouch investigation the FDA wrote that it had “no indication that this issue extends beyond these recalled products.”
They do not assert intent as a legal finding. The FDA’s position on the pouch cinnamon is a “leading hypothesis” of economically motivated adulteration, backed by its finding of lead chromate and the economic-adulteration import alert. Ecuador’s regulator reported, as of February 2024, that its own investigation and legal proceedings were ongoing.
They do not test every import. The FDA states that its monitoring programs “only evaluate a small subset of the commodity being imported.”

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9. Dates and Status as of 11 October 2026

October–November 2023: pouch recall and FDA safety alert; Import Alert 99-42 listing for the pouches (6 November 2023).
6 March 2024: first ground-cinnamon alert (six distributors, 2.03–3.4 ppm) and letter to the U.S. cinnamon industry.
April 2024: the outbreak investigation ends; the FDA moves to post-incident work.
June 2024: import alerts 99-47 and 99-42 on the foreign cinnamon distributor; warning letter to a national discount retailer.
25 July 2024: second alert (one product, 20 ppm).
30 July, 30 August and 1 November 2024: third, combined alert (11 brands, 2.03–7.68 ppm) and two additions.
9 August 2024: warning letter to the Ecuadorian pouch manufacturer.
November–December 2024: warning letters to three importers under the Foreign Supplier Verification Program; the FDA’s post-incident page is updated on 12 December 2024.

Legal status. The alerts are advisories and the recalls were voluntary; there was no rulemaking, so there is nothing proposed, final or stayed. A check of the Federal Register through 11 October 2026 found no document setting a federal lead limit for cinnamon or spices.

Later updates. The combined ground-cinnamon alert stayed open after 2024. The FDA updated it repeatedly between September 2025 and 28 September 2026, adding further ground cinnamon products found with elevated lead by FDA retail sampling and by state programs; the highest level in its current table is 10.7 ppm. The separate January 2025 FDA action levels for lead in processed baby food are covered on FDA Action Levels for Lead in Baby Food (2025) and are not repeated here.

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10. How the Alerts Fit the FDA’s Other Lead Actions

Toxic Elements monitoring. The March alert places the cinnamon testing inside the FDA’s ongoing Toxic Elements monitoring program, “which includes testing of a variety of foods including colored spices offered for sale in the U.S.” Imported foods with levels of toxic elements that may be unsafe can be placed on Import Alert 99-42.

International standards work. FDA staff took part in a Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting in spring 2024 working toward a recommended international maximum level for lead in bark spices such as cinnamon. The FDA reported that this work would continue in 2025 after more data were gathered. Codex, as the FDA describes it, adopts science-based food standards to protect consumers and promote fair trade.

A legislative request. The July 2024 alerts state that, as part of its FY2025 legislative proposal, the FDA was seeking to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act “to expressly require industry to conduct testing of final products, including those marketed for consumption by infants and young children, for contaminants and maintain such records.” This was a request to Congress, not a rule.

Lead from cookware, December 2024. On 12 December 2024 the FDA issued a letter telling retailers and distributors that certain imported cookware made from aluminum, brass and aluminum alloys known as Hindalium/Hindolium or Indalium/Indolium can leach lead into food and “should not be distributed or sold in the U.S. market.” The FDA learned of the problem through the Public Health Department of Seattle and King County, whose testing of imported cookware was linked to high blood lead levels in resettled refugee populations. The FDA had added a cookware manufacturer to an import alert in March 2022.

The next step. In January 2025 the FDA turned to lead in foods made for babies and young children with action levels, reported on the 2025 baby-food lead page. Other 2024 food-safety actions are gathered on the FDA Actions in 2024 hub, including the PFAS food-packaging phase-out and the brominated vegetable oil revocation. Lead adulteration of another colored spice is described on the site’s Lead in Turmeric page.

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11. Primary Documents

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2024). FDA Alert Concerning Certain Cinnamon Products Due to Presence of Elevated Levels of Lead. Public health alert, 6 March 2024 (content current as of 18 March 2024). No Federal Register document or docket — fda.gov alert, 6 March 2024
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2024). FDA Public Health Alert for Additional Ground Cinnamon Product Due to Presence of Elevated Levels of Lead. Public health alert, 25 July 2024 — fda.gov alert, 25 July 2024
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2024–2026). More Ground Cinnamon Products Added to FDA Public Health Alert Due to Presence of Elevated Levels of Lead. Combined public health alert, 30 July 2024, updated 30 August 2024, 1 November 2024 and through 28 September 2026 — fda.gov combined alert
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2024). Post-Incident Response Activities: Elevated Lead and Chromium Levels in Cinnamon Applesauce Pouches. FDA program page, content current as of 12 December 2024 — fda.gov post-incident page
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2023–2024). Investigation of Elevated Lead & Chromium Levels: Cinnamon Applesauce Pouches (November 2023). Outbreak investigation page, status “Ended,” with updates of 26 March, 16 April, 20 June and 15 August 2024 — fda.gov investigation page
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2024). FDA Issues Letter to Retailers and Distributors Concerning Lead in Certain Imported Cookware. Human Foods Program constituent update, 12 December 2024 — fda.gov constituent update, 12 December 2024

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Key Research Papers

Troeschel AN, Buser MC, Winquist A, Ruckart P, Yeh M, Kuai D, Chang A, Pennington AF, Rumph JT, Smith MR, et al. (2025). Investigation of Lead and Chromium Exposure After Consumption of Contaminated Cinnamon-Containing Applesauce — United States, November 2023–April 2024. MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 74(14):239-244 — PubMed PMID: 40273027
Cataldo N, Weed BD, Lewis K, Kirchner M, Arnold K, Michael L, Chang A, Daniel JH, Shone S, Yeung L, et al. (2026). International Investigation of Lead and Chromium Contamination in Imported Apple Puree. Journal of Environmental Health 89(1):20-27 — PubMed PMID: 42516822
Hore P, Alex-Oni K, Sedlar S, Nagin D (2019). A Spoonful of Lead: A 10-Year Look at Spices as a Potential Source of Lead Exposure. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice 25(Suppl 1):S63-S70 — PubMed PMID: 30507772
Cowell W, Ireland T, Vorhees D, Heiger-Bernays W (2017). Ground Turmeric as a Source of Lead Exposure in the United States. Public Health Reports 132(3):289-293 — PubMed PMID: 28358991
Forsyth JE, Nurunnahar S, Islam SS, Baker M, Yeasmin D, Islam MS, Rahman M, Fendorf S, Ardoin NM, Winch PJ, Luby SP (2019). Turmeric means “yellow” in Bengali: Lead chromate pigments added to turmeric threaten public health across Bangladesh. Environmental Research 179(Pt A):108722 — PubMed PMID: 31550596
Forsyth JE, Mistree D, Nash E, Angrish M, Luby SP (2024). Evidence of turmeric adulteration with lead chromate across South Asia. Science of the Total Environment 949:175003 — PubMed PMID: 39053552
Lanphear BP, Hornung R, Khoury J, Yolton K, Baghurst P, Bellinger DC, Canfield RL, Dietrich KN, Bornschein R, Greene T, et al. (2005). Low-level environmental lead exposure and children’s intellectual function: an international pooled analysis. Environmental Health Perspectives 113(7):894-899 — PubMed PMID: 16002379

The first two papers are the CDC and FDA investigators’ own accounts of the 2023–2024 pouch incident: the CDC report counts 566 cases reported by 44 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico between November 2023 and April 2024, 55% of them in children under two, and the FDA-led paper describes the laboratory work that identified lead chromate. The New York City study reports that more than 30% of 1,496 spice samples collected during lead-poisoning investigations exceeded 2 ppm lead. The pooled analysis of 1,333 children found intellectual deficits associated with blood lead levels even below 7.5 µg/dL.

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Connections

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