comment: >
  
  Agreed. it's just funny to me the high horse of this guy for only buying dark chocolate from Tony's as they post this reddit from a device that also used slavery to produce it. 
  Lithium Ion batteries contain Cobalt, of which 3/4 of the world's source comes from a select few mines in the Congo. 
  Not sure what you are talking abt there literally are no large scale, ethical cobalt mines in the Congo that produce the batteries you and I are using right now.
context: But, if you look at other studies, it literally changes by the week which brands are high and which brands are low. It's because they're constantly buying more beans and the beans come from different farms. If they have one good test it's because they bought one good batch. Every brand has this problem from time to time and there's not really much that can be done about it short of rebuilding the chocolate supply chain from the ground up.  Every time you do this kind of test you're going to catch a few brands out and it's going to be basically random which ones had the high numbers in which one didn't. >
  
  Maybe a rebuild is just the medicine, if not for the ~~chemicals~~ heavy metals, then the slavery. >
  
  Just to be a petty pedant, as elements on the periodic table, heavy metals are not technically chemicals unto themselves. >
  
  Reasonable clarification. Nothing petty or pedantic imo. I ain't no nerd. Thanks >
  
  Bitch I aint no nerd! >
  
  That reminds me, I'm heading to Levines, if anyone needs pants. >
  
  Yo, here’s what youre gonna do. You’re gonna walk up there. Get me a chicken sandwich. Okay bitch. And a Dr. Pepper. FOR FREE! >
  
  Whatever happened to that guy? Didn’t his videos like disappear from the internet? >
  
  That would be....unforgivable... >
  
  Love me a good cadmium egg around Easter >
  
  If I had a nickel every time I heard that one! >
  
  Talk about burying the lead. >
  
  Yes copper, this punster right here. >
  
  You guys had to steel all the good puns, huh? >
  
  Steel isn't an element you boron. >
  
  Oh the irony of your correction. >
  
  That guy sucked up all the oxygen in the room, and now everyone left, and I hadn’t even metal of them yet. >
  
  You guys are really on Tin ice! >
  
  All the good puns Argon, I gassed out >
  
  From the related article:
  
  In a proposed class action filed on Wednesday, Christopher Lazazzaro said he would not have bought or would have paid less for Hershey's Special Dark Mildly Sweet Chocolate, Lily's Extra Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa and Lily's Extreme Dark Chocolate 85% Cocoa had Hershey disclosed their metals content.
  
  "I'm not saying I wouldn't eat leaded chocolate, I just think the price is outrageous." >
  
  Sounds like something Homer Simpson would say self-righteously >
  
  This is the most lead you've had in your chocolate so far... >
  
  Unironically it likely isn't. >
  
  Meh, got chocolat, 🧠 still 💪🏿 >
  
  God dammit. Their dark chocolate peanut butter cups are one of my favorites. >
  
  Apparently it's not those that are in question, it's two different dark chocolate bars they sell, but I'd avoid all of their chocolate products just to be safe. >
  
  Dark chocolate from many manufacturers is tainted. The cocoa plants are polluted. >
  
  Regular chocolate is polluted too, it's just that the darker stuff is using more cocoa substances so you get higher toxicity
  There's no way around this until all the companies are held responsible and source their chocolate from parts of the world that aren't using leaded gas or whatever the reason is for this contamination (it happens during the step where you dry the beans out in the sun)
  Edit: that makes me wonder. If this much lead is contaminating the beans just from sitting outside, I wonder what the fuck is going on in the lungs of the locals over there?
  Really wish leaded gasoline had never been discovered. Its one of the most harmful inventions in history >
  
  Thomas Midgley Jr. developed leaded gas while working for General Motors. Dude also invented CFCs which put a whole in the Ozone. Probably the most destructive human to ever live. >
  
  Midgley should be the word for royally fucking up to a disastrous level. Like, “Wow man, you really Midley’d that brand new Ferrari by filling it with diesel.” >
  
  He didn't just fuck up. He was aware of the harm that these substances caused, yet he pushed them anyway. >
  
  Yeah, him and his boss were greedy fucks. I think they worked for DuPont at some stage. The Du Pont family, the Sacklers and the Koch brothers sure left a scar on the world. And I’m sure they’re very proud of themselves, too. >
  
  First Hershey's now Trader Joes. >
  
  It's literally everyone. They're just going after the big pockets one at a time.  It's been known for a while now.  It's not like there's anything these companies can actually do about it. Or at least not practically. They would have to have rigorous bean sourcing that could trace every batch of beans from each individual farm and then selectively test from batches from every single farm and slowly build up a black list of farms not to buy from anymore. 
  If that sounds like a simple fix to you, it's definitely not. >
  
  Let's say some rice had high levels of mercury. Would you be fine with that if it was like, really hard to determine the source? >
  
  That's already the case with rice and arsenic. Arsenide based pesticides were widely used on cotton crops for decades, particularly in the Mississippi basin and in Texas, and some places especially in south east Asia are irrigated with arsenic contaminated groundwater. When rice is grown on arsenic contaminated fields, it bioaccumulates about 10 times as much as other cereals.
  I'm lucky, I've got the literature research prowess to plow through the academic papers and buy my basmati in 10 kg sacks from the Himalayan foothills and short-grain/sushi/paella rice from California, areas that produce low-arsenic rice. Others have never even heard of the issue, even though food arsenic increases cancer rates enough to account for the loss of 1.4 million disability-adjusted life years, each year, globally. >
  
  Do you have any brand recs for those of us too lazy to figure out what brands are sourced from the Himalayan foothills? :-) >
  
  Nearly all the export basmati is, and some proudly advertise this on the bags. Basmati is grown where the temperatures are cooler and year-round rainfall/runoff is available. The Eastern and southern extents of India also produce huge amounts of rice, but as far as I can tell, its different, higher yielding varieties for the domestic market.
  I mostly pick up the Royal as its fairly priced, but tried the more premium Daawat and Kohinoor in the past. My taste buds just aren't good enough to distinguish better aged basmati after I've slathered it in dhals or masalas. 
  I have an enormous Indian-American owned grocer nearby; where in most US grocers the back wall is refrigerated meats and dairy, in this one its all bulk bags of rice, lentils, and flour. The Indian specialty grocers in Houston were similar but smaller, still big bags at a fraction of the cost of mainstream grocers. Meanwhile, the smaller retail packages of spices/herbs are 7+ oz, and still cost less than the tiny 1-2 oz spices in mainstream grocers; and if you really need 2 kg of ground Kashmiri pepper, its there. >
  
  This is so kind of you to lay out—I have an Indian grocer near me, I’ll take a look there. Thank you!! >
  
  Things grown in dirt often have heavy metals in them. Chocolate with higher real chocolate will have more as a result >
  
  Some have more than others. Quality Control should be used to ensure products with unhealthy amounts of lead and cadmium aren't sold to consumers. >
  
  It is and they aren’t. You guys don’t seem to understand that there are trace elements all over the place that are hazardous in high doses that don’t exist in normal conditions. The earth’s crust naturally emits radon gas. Plants tend to concentrate heavy metals from the soil. Bioaccumulation of mercury in fish is ubiquitous. That doesn’t instantly mean that they represent a hazard to human health. You guys need to stop letting popular science magazines deliberately misrepresent the results of actual scientific papers  and understand the conclusions actually being drawn. The chocolate having 100x higher levels of heavy metals than background doesn’t mean anything if the background levels were already negligible. I’m being hyperbolic, but the point is that an analytical chemist quantitatively telling you that a brand of chocolate has a level of cadmium relatively higher than others, but still negligible is different from a toxicologist telling you that the chocolate poses a threat to human health. It doesn’t. We can address real problems of legacy pesticides like literal Lead Arsenide polluting our fields without fear-mongering that a bar of chocolate is going to shave 10 years off your life because it happened to be the bar measured to have the highest content. Whenever you measure a group of things one of them is going to have the lowest/highest value, that’s not a news story but it is a way to scare idiots. >
  
  I live in Cali and am a chemist. You have clearly not comprehended what I said. What you linked is not a study, it’s an overview of the methodology used. The fact that you don’t know the difference gives you no ground to stand on. Prop 65 is also notoriously sensitive to the point of being useless for personal risk management. If you walk into a parking garage here you will pass a prop 65 sign. I’m not admonishing it for existing and I’m glad it does, but it is not a useful benchmark to live your daily life against.
  I didn’t claim the study compared against a background, I claimed that you idiots don’t understand that an “elevated” level of something does not mean a dangerous level, and that your intake of trace metals from natural sources is not zero.
  In your own methodology review, you managed to miss the last, italicized paragraph that literally explains to you that a chocolate bar being over the daily limit for a trace metal doesn’t mean it is a hazard to human health because chocolate consumption is occasional. Even the most die-hard chocolate fan is not eating enough chocolate to make this an issue before the sugar becomes one. I reiterate, you don’t understand toxicology and risk assessment when it comes to trace metals consumption, so get off your high horse. You are eating trace amounts of cadmium, lead, arsenic, methyl mercury, etc, all the time. That’s the nature of existing. You can wrap yourself in bubble wrap before you step outside or you can acknowledge that no matter what you do you will encounter some risk in your day. Regardless, I’ll spare you a further paragraph since you seem to struggle with reading comprehension. In the future, it might be worthwhile to you to consider whether you’re self-dissing by acting like reading a book would be a bad thing, especially when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Bye. >
  
  I linked to the methodology because that’s where the details you were clearly too lazy to read were located.  And prop 65 being strict does not negate the fact that most of what you stated in your initial comment was a straw man or just plain incorrect.
  Furthermore, you clearly failed to read once again:
  
  We estimated daily consumption of the chocolate bars using both the label serving size and the one ounce
  or 30 grams per eating occasion FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) reference amount customarily consumed (RACC) of chocolate,
  
  Metals contents were not based on ‘bars’, and 1oz of chocolate is absolutely not unreasonable for daily consumption.
  Also, since you brought up the topic of reading comprehension, you should prob focus on improving your own.  The italicized part at the end is not saying that eating chocolate with lead is ok because it’s occasional.  It was explaining their rationale for choosing 100% MADL as the benchmark for acceptable (‘less concerning’) levels.
  I’d say don’t quit your day job, but maybe in this case you should. >
  
  First Hershey's, now this?! I love to eat whole ass bars of dark chocolate in one sitting. Looks like that's not happening anymore :( >
  
  Wait what? Is this a problem across the board with all brands? Because I can hork up a pound of the stuff in a day easily if o get my hands on it. Shucks. >
  
  This is a problem with any food that is grown in places without strict environmental regulations. You will have the same issue with dark roast coffee beans and grounds. >
  
  No no no, shut up! La La La La! >
  
  damn I love chocolate >
  
  Not good. Eat their dark choc every day. My last purchase was a box of 70 bars. Wtf is nothing sacred anymore. >
  
  Enjoy your chocolate; there are trace levels of heavy metals in pretty much everything grown in the soil.  I assure you you're already eating it; this is just someone trying to make a quick buck.  They're using California's Prop 65 as a standard which is exceedingly strict and far below the levels needed to cause any sort of acute harm. >
  
  Thanks that is actually very reassuring. >
  
  Ugh thanks…the saga continues. >
  
  But it's ORGANIC lead and cadmium... >
  
  And 100% NATURAL! >
  
  To put some peoples minds at ease…
  The tested levels were all well below the WHO’s maximum daily intake numbers. 
  This story is also about 5 years old. >
  
  There is no acceptable intake levels for lead. The only healthy amount is -ZERO-.
  The best you can say is that chocolate is far from the only source of lead so you might as well say "fuck it". >
  
  dang... their Ugandan dark chocolate bars are my go-to... perfect balance of bitterness & sweet :(( >
  
  Whoa, that’s the exact same chocolate bar I buy. What do I do? >
  
  A ton of spices sold at Walmart (and a few other stores) have arsenic, lead and cadmium in them too. Like recently. Worth a Google. >
  
  So…. I’m going to die of lead poisoning basically? >
  
  That's plumb reckless >
  
  comments three minutes after OC
  UnDeRaTeD >
  
  Oh my God I am fueled mostly on dark chocolate yiiiikes >
  
  I'm fueled specifically by chocolate from Trader Joe's. Their dark (70%+) chocolate is way cheaper than anyone else's, and there's also a lot of variety. >
  
  Cadmium eggs are my favorite Easter time candy. >
  
  For those who don't know cadmium is, the word Cadmium does sound like a nice candy brand.   Rhyme with "Premium".
  Trademark it now. >
  
  Will they also go after Ghiradelli, Scharffen Berger, Lindt, Dove, Godiva?  All guilty of lead in the dark chocolate. >
  
  So what about their dark & milk chocolate peanut butter cups? >
  
  Their chocolate pb cups are pretty good >
  
  As long as it’s not the Dark Chocolate Peanut butter Cups! Addicted! >
  
  Seriously!  I have a whole container.  I don’t want to waste it… >
  
  Can i get in on this lawsuit? >
  
  Fuckin love those cadmium crème eggs >
  
  Is it a natural byproduct though? >
  
  That’s not good news and I shop there all the time I love their dark chocolate >
  
  I didn't see any in the article, but was there any sign of negligence, intent or malfeasance? If not then why not sue the manufacturer or distributor? >
  
  Just relabel it as dark metal chocolate. >
  
  Cadmium, Cadbury, what's the difference?
  They both go good in chocolate around Easter time. >
  
  Abolish things like the FDA and the EPA and shit like this would slip through all the time. >
  
  I said Cadbury!  Cadbury you imbecile! >
  
  That’s actually why they call them Cadbury. >
  
  I heard the lead just gives it a sweeter flavor!
  /s >
  
  How does it end-up being easier to add heavy metals to a chocolate bar?  It's not like they're refining gold or something. >
  
  much of the chocolate comes from underdeveloped countries in Africa (TJ's literally has a tasty dark chocolate bar that says UGANDA on the front), and unfortunately the whole continent is like a gigantic toxic superfund site due to its over-reliance on mining :/
  It's really a catch 22... companies like TJ's want to find ways for these developing nations to diversity their economies & lift villagers out of poverty, while scaling back the scope of natural resource exploitation. But it's not like these 3rd world countries can make fine woolens or even process the cocoa beans into chocolate at their stage of development. >
  
  TJ's is owned by Aldi. >
  
  2nd article now that i see regarding Lead being found in dark chocolate. Hershey's had a similar issue a few days ago. >
  
  Not a fan of TJ after the way they treated their employees who asked not to close down or receive leave but just asked for masks and hand sanitizer during covid.
  They are making a strong push with all of the YouTube influencers to repair that image.
  I think the place sucks and is overpriced. >
  
  Hoping this pushes the chocolate industry away from carbon piping even faster than it’s currently moving. It’s fucking astounding how much chocolate moves through black metal. >
  
  Damn, just finished pff a box of dark chocolate truffles yesterday from them. I’m about to get violent. >
  
  Funny you joke you get violent. People who go to indoor shooting ranges experience high levels of lead and exposure results in aggressive behavior. >
  
  is that where cadbury eggs get their filling from? Cadmium? >
  
  i have a craving for trader joes dark chocolate now >
  
  It's supposed to be Cadbury, not cadmium berry. Oops. >
  
  Does anyone have an explanation for how the lead and cadmium ends up in the Chocolate in the first place? Is this due to the water the cocoa plants are watered with? something during processing? A dude who can't measure how much lead he adds properly? >
  
  I don't think that info has been verified yet, but the assumption is land which some of the cocao is sourced from is contaminated. It could be the water used as well, but I believe it is unknown at this time. >
  
  Not just the land, I read that it’s in the air which cacao is exposed to during the open-air drying process. Looks like they’re going to have to move it inside where they can control the conditions. Might also consider getting rid of the practice of incinerating garbage to generate electricity, but that’s a tangent… >
  
  Has an investigation been done verifying that is the direct cause? >
  
  Thought it was Hershys? >
  
  This is why the saag paneer was discontinued nationwide. >
  
  What about milk chocolate the absolute Chad of the chocolates? >
  
  Full of chadmium :( >
  
  Another reason I don’t shop there. Cadmium and Karens are so toxic >
  
  How many bars did they have to check before the lawyers struck the jackpot and found one slightly above the FDA limit? >
  
  Let's just say that the law firm had to hire personal trainers so they could get through discovery. >
  
  No surprises here. Alot of our food supply contain so much synthetic ingredients I wouldn't be totally surprised if this is the only place that had this issue. >
  
  I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't the only place. >
  
  I was thinking to myself I love how hefty the Trader Joe's bars feel in your hand. The 3 packs are good for doing curls or you can strap them to your ankles as running weights. >
  
  I hope it’s not the giant hazelnut bar in the orange box!  I’m about to crack one tonight. >
  
  The issue with the consumer reports is they used the ridiculously low California standard for this. 
  Even the high levels bars were by no means dangerous unless you're consuming massive quality. >
  
  They aren't ridiculously low and people do consume massive amounts of it. >
  
  everything is unsafe to eat guys. Can we just photosynthesize instead? >
  
  Then get off your phone, computer, tablet, EV, or anything with a lithium ion battery in it....
  Good luck using no products made with slavery. Not excusing any of it but you'd be a fool to think that shopping exclusively at Tony's is gonna solve your issue. >
  
  They never claimed to solve the issue, just that, if you can't be bothered to care about other humans for something as simple as choosing a brand/merchant of chocolate then you're probably a shitty human being.
  Also there are plenty of ethical lithium mines and plenty of manufacturers that buy exclusively from them, for similar price as well. These companies do it by taking a hit to their margins