Heavy Metals Testing and NMN (Nicotinamide Mononucleotide)

What is the big deal, why can’t we ingest heavy metals? There are heavy metals in some foods that we eat including fish such as Swordfish, Tuna, Bass and Snapper, in vegetables such as potatoes, celery and cabbage, even water and if we do ingest heavy metals, what are the negative implications?

We all know that heavy metals can be bad for us, in some cases ingesting heavy metals can be lethal, but there is not a lot of data on what is safe and what an acceptable level is, that’s even if there even is an official acceptable level.

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Neither the USDA nor the FDA have set any limits on heavy metals in food, including organic foods, meaning that products can contain unregulated levels of mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, copper and even tungsten while still being legally sold in the USA and to make matters worse heavy metals are now being found in USDA certified organic foods, superfoods, vitamins, herbs and dietary supplements.

If this is true in the USA, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is going on in other countries too, especially those were testing and regulation is far less stringent than places like the USA, Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia, New Zealand etc.

Thankfully reputable distributors of NMN like DoNotAge, Renue by Science and ProHealth Longevity send their NMN for testing to an accredited third-party laboratory, and post their test certificate results for all customers to see BEFORE they part with your hard-earned cash; the guidelines I follow when it comes to third-party test certificates are:

• If a company has no third-party certificates, I will give them a miss

• If they say they do conduct testing, but no certificates are visible, again I would give them a miss

• If a company will send a copy of the certificate with your purchase, IMHO give them a miss

• If a company can only show you a third-party certificate supplied by the first party, again give them a miss, IMHO these cannot be trusted

What is the official standard; even if a reputable company like ProHealth or Renue by Science post their results and stipulate that the lead content is <0.5 ppm in their NMN, is that good or bad? Where can you go to find out? The short answer is, at the time of publishing this article, nowhere, there is no official standard.

If the is no standard, what is the solution? The industry desperately needs a standard, even a voluntary standard, to which products can be compared for their heavy metals composition. Neither the USDA nor the FDA have expressed any interest in promoting or enforcing such a standard, so an organization called Low Heavy Metals Verified has developed and published an unofficial standard.

They say, this logarithmic standard is a purely voluntary, companies may wish to use it or not, and as for individuals, we may also wish to use it to measure heavy metals levels in our supplements, or not.

I really believe that there should be a standard, but as I could not find an official standard; because one doesn’t exist, I had to look to for an unofficial/voluntary standard, Low Heavy Metals Verified was the only one I could find, so I checked it out.

Thir verification standard uses a coin system that measures the levels of Lead, Cadmium, Arsenic and Mercury and awards an ascending grade depending on how low the levels are, the standard goes from A+++ to F. If your supplement meets all the standards in A+++, you get an A+++, if however, it meets all the standards in A+++, but let’s say Lead is 0.030, then you’re your grade or standard would drop down to an A++.