Heavy metals in Snake Oil, in plain English

Every so often a headline announces that protein powders, greens powders or electrolyte mixes "contain lead." They do. So does the spinach in your fridge. This page explains what the numbers mean, what ours are, and why we're comfortable putting our name on the pouch.

Where heavy metals in food come from

Lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury are elements. They're in the Earth's crust, so they're in soil and water, and plants pull trace amounts up through their roots along with the potassium, magnesium and zinc they need to grow. Any food that started as a plant carries a little. Root vegetables, leafy greens, rice, oats, cocoa and botanical extracts tend to carry more because of how and where they grow.

Snake Oil is made of exactly those things: botanical extracts, amino acids, vitamins and mineral salts. Concentrate a plant into a powder and you concentrate its trace minerals too, the wanted ones and the unwanted ones alike. That's not contamination; it's agriculture. The question that matters is how much.

How to read a heavy-metals test

Our co-manufacturer tests every production lot by ICP-MS, the lab method regulators use for trace metals. The report lists each metal in parts per million (ppm), which is the same as micrograms per gram of powder. To turn that into what you actually consume, multiply by the serving size. A Snake Oil stick is about 18 grams.

Our highest lead result to date is 0.104 ppm, on a lot of Elysian Orange. That works out to about 1.9 micrograms of lead per stick. Our other flavors have tested below the lab's detection floor, which means under about 1.6 micrograms per stick and likely well under. Arsenic, cadmium and mercury on every lot sit far below any limit that matters.

What the limits are

There isn't one lead limit. There are several, set for different purposes, and they're very far apart:

  • California Proposition 65 sets a notice level of 0.5 micrograms per day. It's a right-to-know threshold, calculated by dividing the lowest no-effect level in the research by 1,000. Cross it and a warning label is required in California. It is not a safety limit, and the state says so.
  • The FDA's interim reference level is the number the agency uses to judge whether lead in a food warrants action: 2.2 micrograms per day for children and 8.8 micrograms per day for women of childbearing age.
  • International bodies (the WHO's expert committee on food additives, the European Food Safety Authority) set tolerable intake guidance that works out to tens of micrograms per day for an adult.

So a stick of Snake Oil at 1.9 micrograms is about four times California's notice level, about a fifth of the FDA's level for the most protected adult group, and a rounding error against the typical American diet, which the FDA's Total Diet Study puts in the range of several micrograms of lead a day from ordinary food.

Why we show the California warning anyway

Because the law says to, and because we'd rather over-disclose than argue. Prop 65 doesn't care that the lead came from a milk thistle plant or that the amount is a fraction of a baked potato. If a product can deliver more than 0.5 micrograms in a day, California wants the notice on it. We put the notice where California shoppers will see it, and we put this page next to it so the notice makes sense. The short version: California Proposition 65 and Snake Oil.

What we do to keep the numbers low

  • Every lot is tested before it ships. Not a sample lot once a year; every lot.
  • Production runs in an FDA-registered facility under federal cGMP rules, with the microbiology panel (plate count, yeast and mold, E. coli, Salmonella, Staph) on the same certificate as the metals.
  • We read every certificate before a lot is released, and we publish the worst number we have seen, not the best.

Short answers

Is Snake Oil tested for heavy metals? Yes. Every lot, for lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury, by ICP-MS at an independent accredited lab.

Why does a drink mix have any lead at all? Because it's made from plants and minerals, and plants take up trace metals from soil. Everything from oats to kale does the same.

Is it safe to drink Snake Oil every day? At one stick a day you're well under the FDA's reference level for the most sensitive adult group. Snake Oil isn't designed as a daily supplement; most people reach for it after a rough night or a long day.

Why is the warning only in California? Because Prop 65 is a California law. No federal rule, and no other state, requires a warning at these levels.

Will you ever change the formula to get under the Prop 65 line? Getting under 0.5 micrograms would mean taking out the botanicals, which would mean taking out what makes Snake Oil work. We'd rather keep the plants, keep testing, and keep showing you the numbers.