Lead: Tap Water, Tableware, Cans, and Spices. Where Should You Be Careful? Lead in Food, and Entry Points Other Than Food

Short answer

Lead in food: mostly below the limit of quantification

These are MAFF’s surveys of content (domestic and distributed products). Means are shown as a range, with results below the limit of quantification replaced by 0 (LB) to the limit of quantification (UB).

• MAFF explains that concentrations in rice and vegetables are lower than in other foods, but because they are eaten in large amounts, their contribution to intake is large.
• For green tea, with 10 g of tea leaves in 450 mL of 90°C water for 60 seconds, about 8.8% of the lead went into the infusion. MAFF concludes that tea is not a major source of intake.
• For processed ume products, those made from domestic ingredients were lower than those from overseas ingredients, and MAFF estimates that intake from processed ume products is 0.76% (domestic) or 4.5% (overseas) of the whole diet.

Tap water: 1.92 million lead service pipes remain

• The tap water quality standard is 0.01 mg/L or less for lead (revised in 2003; the pre-revision value has not been confirmed).
• Lead service pipes were used nationwide until the late 1980s. The number remaining is 5.09 million (fiscal 2005) → 3.03 million (fiscal 2014) → 1.92 million (fiscal 2023). The pace of decline has slowed since fiscal 2014.
• MLIT’s target is, by the end of fiscal 2028, a 100% rate of replacement plans among the remaining operators and the elimination of 150,000 pipes a year. At an expert panel (December 2025), one comment was that “even at 150,000 a year it would take more than 10 years.”
• The Food Safety Commission’s advice: until lead service pipes are replaced, use the first water drawn in the morning and water after a long absence for purposes other than drinking (a guide is 10–15 L).

Tableware: ceramics, enamelware, and imported dishes

• Japan’s leaching specifications for lead and cadmium in ceramics were tightened by MHLW Notification No. 416 of July 31, 2008 (applying to products made or imported on or after August 1, 2009). For ceramics under 1.1 L, with 4% acetic acid for 24 hours, lead is 2 μg/mL and cadmium 0.5; for 1.1–3 L, lead 1 and cadmium 0.25; for 3 L or more, lead 0.5 and cadmium 0.25; and for cookware for heating, lead 0.5 and cadmium 0.05.
• Monitoring of imported food (fiscal 2025): of 58 violations of specifications for apparatus and containers and packaging, the lead violations were 36 cases of pottery from Uzbekistan (MHLW; the table columns in the source are garbled, so the other breakdowns are not certain).
• The Food Safety Commission advises not using decorative ceramics, which are not intended as tableware, as tableware, because lead can leach out.

Canned food: lead has fallen, and tin comes from canned food and bamboo shoots

• Lead in canned fruit fell with statistical significance, from a mean of 0.06 and maximum of 0.19 mg/kg in 2013 to a mean of 0.02 and maximum of 0.06 in 2016. The cause is presumed to be lead, present as an impurity in the tin-plated steel for cans, dissolving out, and steel manufacturers voluntarily reduced the lead. There was also no increase during storage.
• Tin: Japanese intake is 339 μg/day (2024), about 0.3% of JECFA’s tolerable intake (14 mg/kg per week). 98% came from fruit (canned) at 199 and other vegetables and seaweed (bamboo shoots and the like) at 133.
• Japan’s standard is tin of 150.0 ppm or less for soft drinks in metal containers. Whether there is a standard for canned foods (other than beverages) has not been confirmed. The EU is 200 for canned food, 100 for canned drinks, and 50 mg/kg for canned infant food.
• An industry association advises that tinplate cans with no interior coating (for fruit and the like) let tin dissolve more easily if left open in the can, so food should be moved to a glass, ceramic, or plastic container and refrigerated. The same association explains that the trace tin that dissolves does not accumulate in the body and is excreted, and is safe from a food hygiene standpoint (treated here as the industry association’s explanation).

Spices and chocolate: adulteration cases, and gaps in Japanese data

• Turmeric in Bangladesh: in 7 of the 9 main producing areas there was evidence that lead chromate, a yellow pigment, had been mixed in, and lead in turmeric powder reached a maximum of 1,152 μg/g (Munshiganj district, Dhaka; the maximum across the 9 main areas was 690) (Forsyth 2019; interviews with 152 people, 524 samples). People involved testified that it had gone on for more than 30 years because consumers preferred a bright yellow color.
• In 23 cities in 4 South Asian countries, among 356 turmeric samples (2020–21), 14% (51 samples) exceeded 2 μg/g, and in Patna (India), Karachi, and Peshawar (Pakistan) some exceeded 1,000 μg/g (Forsyth 2024).
• An example of measures working: through awareness campaigns, news coverage, and enforcement by the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority, detection of lead in market turmeric went from 47% (2019) to 0% (2021) (Forsyth 2023, n=631).
• Cinnamon applesauce in the US (2023–24): the US CDC reported 566 cases (blood lead 3.5 μg/dL or higher) from 44 states and the District of Columbia, among others. 55% were under age 2, and the median blood lead was 7.2 μg/dL.
• EU standards: for lead in dried spices, 2.0 for bark, 1.50 for roots and rhizomes, 0.90 for seeds, 0.60 for fruit, and 1.0 mg/kg for buds. Japan has no standard for lead in spices. Codex has been adopting maximum levels for lead in dried spices in stages since 2024 (figures not shown here). We found no published data from Japanese import inspections on lead in turmeric or cinnamon.
• Chocolate and cocoa: there is a Japanese market survey of cadmium (National Institute of Health Sciences, 2015–16), but we found no Japanese survey of lead. Private US testing (Consumer Reports) reported that 23 of 28 products exceeded California’s daily intake standard (Proposition 65) at one ounce. This is a yardstick that is not a regulatory limit for food.

Assessing lead: why there is no tolerable intake, and blood lead in Japanese people

• JECFA (2010) withdrew the PTWI of 25 μg/kg per week (derived in 1986). Because it could correspond to a decrease of 3 or more IQ points in children and a rise of about 3 mmHg in adult systolic blood pressure, and no threshold could be found, it concluded that no new value could be set.
• EFSA (2010) put the BMDL01 for developmental neurotoxicity at a blood lead of 12 μg/L (0.50 μg/kg/day from diet), for systolic blood pressure at 36 μg/L (1.50), and the BMDL10 for chronic kidney disease at 15 μg/L (0.63).
• Food Safety Commission (June 29, 2021): because a blood lead concentration without adverse effects could not be derived, a tolerable intake cannot be set. It says that the average blood lead of Japanese people is about 1 μg/dL or less, close to the 1–2 μg/dL at which effects are suggested, but that this does not mean effects occur at the individual level and that it is also difficult to attribute effects definitively to lead.
• Blood lead in Japanese people: the median in the Japan Environment and Children’s Study (pregnant women) is 0.61 μg/dL, and it is reported that blood lead in adults (pregnant women) has fallen to one-fifth to one-tenth over the past 25 years.
• Children’s IQ: in an international pooled analysis (Lanphear 2005), IQ was 3.9 points lower when blood lead rose from 2.4 to 10 μg/dL. Among Japanese 12-year-olds (286 children, Tatsuta 2020), an association appeared in boys only. Both are observational studies.
• For 2024, Japanese lead intake is 0.072 μg/kg/day (0.182 for ages 1–6), and the report shows the margin to EFSA’s reference points (MOE, a multiple) as 2.8 to 20.8. Recalculated by Urayomi, 0.50 divided by 0.182 for ages 1–6 is about 2.7. The 0.50 is the reference point for developmental neurotoxicity in children, and 1.50 and 0.63 are reference points for blood pressure and kidney effects in adults, so a comparison that applies all of them to the same person is a rough guide.

Sources

• FSCJ, information on the “Lead” assessment report (June 29, 2021)
• FSCJ, Q&A on the “Lead” assessment report
• MAFF, survey of lead in agricultural products
• MAFF, survey of lead in processed foods (canned fruit, processed ume products, and others)
• MAFF, fiscal 2019 survey of lead, aluminum, and other contents in green tea
• MLIT, materials of the study group on replacing lead water supply pipes, Document 2
• MHLW, fiscal 2025 results of monitoring and guidance under the Imported Food Monitoring and Guidance Plan
• MHLW, partial revision of the standards and specifications for foods, additives, and the like (Notification No. 416)
• EU Regulation 2023/915
• Japan Canners, Bottlers and Preservers Association, Q&A
• Forsyth JE et al. Environ Res 2019 (turmeric in Bangladesh)（PMID 31550596）
• Forsyth JE et al. Sci Total Environ 2024 (turmeric in South Asia)（PMID 39053552）
• Forsyth JE et al. Environ Res 2023 (effect of enforcement)（PMID 37286126）
• CDC MMWR 2025 (cinnamon applesauce)（PMID 40273027）
• Lanphear BP et al. Environ Health Perspect 2005（PMID 16002379）
• Tatsuta N et al. Environ Res 2020 (lead and IQ in Japanese 12-year-olds)（PMID 32678746）

Last checked 2026.10.03 (against the original government documents and papers, collected and cross-checked in Gemini Notebook).

Other explainers

• Should you avoid hijiki?
• How much fish during pregnancy?
• Arsenic and cadmium in brown and white rice
• Baby food, infant food, and powdered formula
• Cooking at home to reduce metals
• Differences between Japanese and overseas standards
• Fifty years of heavy metal intake in Japan
• Do detox and chelation work?