I’m linking this article here since it has Canada specific information.

How is this regulated in Canada?

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in an email that it is responsible for the surveillance of chemical residues in foods and how they follow Canadian regulations, while Health Canada sets the maximum level for environmental and industrial pollutants in food.

However, it’s not clear whether these protein products are regulated as food or natural health products, and Health Canada could not respond to CBC’s questions by deadline.

Goodridge wants to see Health Canada set guidelines for these protein powders or dietary supplements, he said.

“There are no specific federal limits for lead in protein powders or dietary supplements,” Goodridge said. “This, in my opinion, is a big regulatory gap.”

  • No_Eponym@lemmy.ca
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    11 hours ago

    In Canada? Good luck. Unless you have something considered clinically relevant, it will be extremely hard to get this publically funded.

    Were you exposed to an industrial accident? Do you work in an industry where you’re likely to be exposed to heavy metals despite ppe? Are you showing symptoms of acute heavy metal exposure (and those symptoms couldn’t be explained by something else)? Unless you answer yes to any of these, odds are low. Why?

    Because if we don’t test, it isn’t real and no one needs to do anything about it. If they started testing folks (costly in and of itself) and found lots of people were high in lead, they would need to identify the source of the toxin. Finding the source of the lead would be extremely expensive, and we already know it’s probably from lots of sources that are expensive to clean up and damaging to industry. That would cause more costs. So in Canada, we just don’t look.

    This is how it has been for a long, long time. It took forever to get them to take lead out of gasoline, asbestos out of insulation, put warnings on fish for mercury, admit smoking was bad for you, etc.

    Maybe you can find a private clinic that can test for you, or a naturopath (often they do the same tests as an MD, at the same lab, just you pay out of pocket; backdoor private medicine). Maybe you can pool testing with a number of folks to get the food you eat tested, and source food from places less likely to be contaminated. While there has likely always been some heavy metal contamination in some types of food in some places, the industrial agriculture we use today has made it far worse, as had years of contamination from leaded gasoline, arsenic-based pesticide, etc. If you have the time and resources, maybe you can avoid it. Again, good luck.