Six Herbalife products have been shown to contain “dangerously high levels” of lead toxins, according to a report from the Fraud Discovery Institute.
The FDI report said that when taken as recommended, these common Herbalife weight management products result in cumulative lead exposure 45 times (4,636 percent) higher than the legal maximum exposure.
Herbalife disagreed with the report’s findings, and insisted that all of its products met regulatory standards.
“The FDA hasn’t established a general limit on lead in foods, but we are certainly well within their suggested guidelines,” Herbalife spokesman George Fischer said.
The study included lab analysis by an FDA-registered lab, medical literature, Herbalife’s product literature and various peer reviewed medical journal articles. Christopher Grell, co-founder of the Dietary Supplement Safety Committee and lawyer specializing in dietary supplement litigation wrote a letter in response to the findings.
Grell said that the products tested showed “”¦levels of lead that are both dangerous and that are in excess of what the law allows under California’s Safe Drinking and Toxic Environment Act of 1994, more commonly known as Prop. 65.”
Proposition 65 was written to protect California’s citizens and drinking water from harmful chemicals that could lead to cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. According to California law, the maximum daily exposure to lead is 0.5 micrograms per day.
The FDI reported that Herbalife’s Thermojetics contained 0.663 mcg of lead per tablet, which is well over the maximum daily exposure level. Herbalife recommends that users take the tablet three times daily, resulting in 5.967 mcg of lead every day, and more than 11 times (1100 percent) the maximum exposure allowed per day.
Other products ShapeWorks Protein Drink Mix, Healthy Meal Nutritional Shake Mix, Tang Kuei Plus herbal tablets, ShapeWorks Cell Activator and Multivitamin Complex were all found to contain high levels of lead if used as directed.
Grell said that the daily exposure to lead from taking the recommended dosage would warrant a warning label.
Barry Minkow, founder of the Fraud Discovery Institute, has a history of scrutinizing Herbalife.
In April, Herbalife said its president and chief operating officer, Gregory Probert, had not finished his MBA degree as stated in his biography. The company said Probert had been enrolled at California State University during the 1980’s but never obtained a degree.
At the time, The Wall Street Journal reported that Minkow had uncovered the discrepancy about the degree, but on Monday Herbalife declined to comment on that. The newspaper also reported that Minkow had “put” options in a bet that Herbalife’s stock price would fall.
Herbalife shares closed down 4.2 percent at $40.17 on Monday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Last month, Herbalife said that Spain’s Ministry of Health had issued an alert cautioning consumption of Herbalife products due to suspicious cases of hepatic toxicity, or liver damage, presumably associated with Herbalife products. Herbalife said it was in discussions with the ministry.
“For more than 28 years, tens of millions of Herbalife consumers worldwide have been safely using Herbalife products with an extremely low incidence of serious adverse event reports citing liver function abnormalities,” the company said.
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