US lawmakers plan to introduce a bill Thursday that aims to limit the amount of heavy metals found in baby food through stronger regulation and enforcement by the US Food and Drug Administration.
In bones, lead can take 25-30 years to leave the body. Actually, this is true of many types of heavy metal poisoning (and radiation, eg radium), and bone loss as we get older tends to release these compounds. This is part of why they believe there’s a delay with ALS and Alzheimers between when you ingest heavy metal and when you actually develop symptoms.
In older adults, the primary source of lead exposure can be endogenous. Excretion of lead is relatively slow, and accumulation is common [31]. During early and middle life, lead is sequestered in the bones, where it replaces calcium in the hydroxyapatite structure [32]. The skeleton contains 70–95% of the body burden of lead where lead can remain for decades [32], which can be exploited for exposure assessment research. Adults experiencing loss of bone mass via osteoporosis release lead into the bloodstream. In older adults, 40–70% of blood lead can be attributed to previous body stores [32]. Lead that entered the body during previous periods of high exposure can become biologically active decades later.
Citation desired. All references I’m seeing explicitly state that lead is eventually excreted in urine and feces.
In bones, lead can take 25-30 years to leave the body. Actually, this is true of many types of heavy metal poisoning (and radiation, eg radium), and bone loss as we get older tends to release these compounds. This is part of why they believe there’s a delay with ALS and Alzheimers between when you ingest heavy metal and when you actually develop symptoms.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7454042/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0161813X20301352