You're quoting half of my statement and taking it out of context.
I specified artificial for a reason. I'm talking about unnaturally altered environments and manufacturing (and for the most part, its the latter but some activities, e.g. mining or poor agriculture practices, have knock off effects that poison environments).
I'm not talking about naturally occurring lead. I realize trace amounts can be found in things like vegetables and meats even when care is taken to use clean soil (e.g. the soil doesn't have any lead contamination, which unfortunately this is not regulated very well in the US) and clean processing methods.
However, these 'safe amounts' are void of any real effort to understand them in combination. For example, lets say product A is deemed to allow a 'safe amount' of 10000 ppb, product B 8000 ppb, product C 12500 ppb and so on. These ppb amounts are determined without thought to other forms of lead exposure from other products. If you look at how much lead and other toxins you're exposed to through a variety of sources it will add up over time.
Simply because it doesn't add up to the thresholds for lead poisoning doesn't mean it lacks any negative consequences
No I got the context. As you said, there are trace amounts of lead and even arsenic in agricultural products for all kinds of reasons, some plants LOVE to fix heavy metals.
> If you look at how much lead and other toxins you're exposed to through a variety of sources it will add up over time
There's simply no evidence to support the broad claim that different toxic substances below their safe thresholds cumulatively are unsafe.
> Simply because it doesn't add up to the thresholds for lead poisoning doesn't mean it lacks any negative consequences
Sure, but you can't in practice prevent ever conceivable negative outcome. You have to think about tradeoffs.
I specified artificial for a reason. I'm talking about unnaturally altered environments and manufacturing (and for the most part, its the latter but some activities, e.g. mining or poor agriculture practices, have knock off effects that poison environments).
I'm not talking about naturally occurring lead. I realize trace amounts can be found in things like vegetables and meats even when care is taken to use clean soil (e.g. the soil doesn't have any lead contamination, which unfortunately this is not regulated very well in the US) and clean processing methods.
However, these 'safe amounts' are void of any real effort to understand them in combination. For example, lets say product A is deemed to allow a 'safe amount' of 10000 ppb, product B 8000 ppb, product C 12500 ppb and so on. These ppb amounts are determined without thought to other forms of lead exposure from other products. If you look at how much lead and other toxins you're exposed to through a variety of sources it will add up over time.
Simply because it doesn't add up to the thresholds for lead poisoning doesn't mean it lacks any negative consequences