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Sophisticated Microbial Metropolis: Revealing Bacterial Teamwork Across Generations

When bacteria build communities, they cooperate and share nutrients across generations. Researchers at the University of Basel have now successfully demonstrated this for the first...

Researchers at the University of Basel have developed a groundbreaking method to study bacterial communities, revealing how bacteria share resources and cooperate across generations. Using Bacillus subtilis as a model, the study highlights the benefits of communal living for bacteria and the complex dynamics within these communities. When bacteria build communities, they cooperate and share nutrients across generations. Researchers at the University of Basel have now successfully demonstrated this for the first time using a newly developed method. This innovative technique enables the tracking of gene expression during the development of bacterial communities over space and time. In nature, bacteria typically live in communities. They collectively colonize our gut, also known as the gut microbiome, or form biofilms such as dental plaque. Living communally offers numerous benefits to individual bacteria, such as increased resilience against harsh environmental conditions, expansion into new territories, and mutual advantages derived from shared resources. Bacterial Life in Communities The development of bacterial communities is a highly complex process where bacteria form intricate three-dimensional structures. In their latest study published on November 16 in the journal Nature Microbiology, the team led by Professor Knut Drescher from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel has investigated the development of bacterial swarm communities in detail. They achieved a methodological breakthrough enabling them to simultaneously measure gene expression and image the behavior of individual cells in microbial communities in space and time. Swarm of Bacillus subtilis bacteria on an agar plate. (Colorized image). Credit: University of Basel, Biozentrum Generational Resource Sharing “We used Bacillus subtilis as a model organism. This ubiquitous bacterium is also found in our intestinal flora. We have revealed that these bacteria, which live in communities, cooperate and interact with each other across generations,” explains Prof Knut Drescher, head of the study. “Earlier generations deposit metabolites for later generations.” They also identified different subpopulations within a bacterial swarm, which produce and consume different metabolites. Some of the metabolites secreted by one subpopulation become the food for other subpopulations that emerge later during swarm development. Task Distribution Within Bacterial Communities The researchers combined state-of-the-art adaptive microscopy, gene expression analyses, metabolite analyses, and robotic sampling. Using this innovative approach, the researchers have been able to simultaneously examine gene expression and bacterial behavior at precisely defined locations and specific times as well as to identify the metabolites secreted by the bacteria. The bacterial swarm could thus be divided into three major regions: the swarm front, the intermediate region, and the swarm center. However, the three regions display gradual transitions.  “Depending on the region, the bacteria differ in appearance, characteristics, and behavior. While they are mostly motile at the edges, the bacteria in the center form long non-motile threads, resulting in a 3D biofilm. One reason is the varying availability of space and resources,” explains first author Hannah Jeckel. “The spatial distribution of bacteria with distinct behavior enables the community to expand but also to hide in a protective biofilm.” This process appears to be a widespread strategy in bacterial communities and is crucial for their survival. Dynamics and Survival Strategies in Bacterial Communities This study illustrates the complexity and dynamics within bacterial communities and reveals cooperative interactions among individual bacteria — in favor of the community. The spatial and temporal effects thus play a central role in the development and establishment of microbial communities. A milestone of this work is the development of a pioneering technique that enabled the researchers to acquire comprehensive spatiotemporal data of a multicellular process at a resolution never before achieved in any other biological system. Reference: “Simultaneous spatiotemporal transcriptomics and microscopy of Bacillus subtilis swarm development reveal cooperation across generations” by Hannah Jeckel, Kazuki Nosho, Konstantin Neuhaus, Alasdair D. Hastewell, Dominic J. Skinner, Dibya Saha, Niklas Netter, Nicole Paczia, Jörn Dunkel and Knut Drescher, 16 November 2023, Nature Microbiology.DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01518-4

Long-haired rats invade Australian coastal towns: ‘Quite destructive’

Hordes of long-haired rats are plaguing coastal communities in Australia, contaminating water supplies, chewing electrical wiring and devouring food supplies.

Emma Gray was among the first to notice signs of the impending plague.A biological researcher, Gray went to northwest Queensland in Australia in June to study one mammal but unexpectedly ended up focusing on another. During her field work, she caught more than 1,000 long-haired rats. As Gray looked around, she saw evidence of far more.“You could just see tunnels everywhere in the grass,” Gray, a postdoctoral researcher at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, told The Washington Post.Gray said she immediately knew what was happening: an explosion in the number of long-haired rats. Native to Australia, long-haired rats normally eke out an existence in relatively low numbers, only to skyrocket into legions when the right conditions present themselves.Gray was right. Hordes of the rats have since spread north as government officials warn of a “Rat Plague.” The rats have most recently hit the country’s coastal towns, including Karumba, where they have chewed through electrical wires, devoured food reserves, attacked pets and, in at least one case, destroyed a car.“They’re causing havoc with everything,” a Karumba resident told 4BC radio, adding: “They’re eating anything and everything they can get their hands on.”Known as Rattus villosissimus to scientists and majaru or mayaroo to Indigenous Australians, the long-haired rat typically lives in arid and semiarid habitats. They normally hide inside cracks in clay soil, which provide shelter both from the heat and from predators such as barn owls, letter-winged kites and feral cats, Gray said.Long-haired rats eat wild plants, specifically their leaves and seeds, Gray added, because unlike the brown rats familiar to city dwellers around the world, they are not commensal, or reliant on humans for food and shelter. Every three to five years, though sometimes more often, La Niña weather brings increased rainfall to Australia, including every year since 2020, when an unusual “triple-dip” La Niña unleashed record-breaking rains across the country, causing flooding and forcing evacuations, the BBC reported.For the long-haired rat, more rain means more vegetation growth, and more food means more rats — lots more. With a strong food supply, long-haired rats can give birth every three weeks, producing litters with as many as 12 babies, Gray said.“It’s a very natural phenomenon that’s been happening basically as far back as our records go, to early explorers,” she said, adding that, despite the lack of historical records, she suspects the boom-and-bust cycle has been going on for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years.Explosions in the long-haired rat population happen every three to 17 years, the last one occurring in 2011 after two years of above-average rainfall, Gray said. Luke Wharton, a resident of a nearby community that was also hit by rats, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that this year’s plague “might top it.”More rats mean more problems, at least for people.“They’re quite destructive when they get into such large numbers,” Gray said.Karumba is only the latest town to suffer under the onslaught. After Gray’s discovery in June near the inland town of Julia Creek, the rats marched steadily northward, hitting other inland communities as they pressed toward the sea, according to the ABC. Along the way, they contaminated water sources and destroyed crops.Long-haired rats have quickly worn out their welcome in Karumba. Jemma Probert, who owns a fishing charter, told the ABC that she’s had to flick them off her boat, while commercial fisherman Brett Fallon told the news organization that every night, at least 100 invade his vessel. Derek Lord, who runs a car rental business, told the AFP that they destroyed a vehicle by stripping the wiring out of the engine bay. He said they also drove his pet ducks “mad” by breaking into their cages and stealing their eggs.“There’s rats everywhere,” Lord said, adding: “They’re just like, bold as hell.”The rats swim out to sandbanks during low tide, only to drown when the water rises, Probert told the ABC. Fallon said that he caught sight of their corpses floating on the water surface.“When the moon came over the town last night, the river was well and truly alive with the bodies of rats,” he said.The rats’ bodies — thousands and thousands of them — then wash ashore. ​​While government officials clean up many of them, others rot.“The stench is quite bad,” Carpentaria Shire Council Mayor Jack Bawden, who represents Karumba, told NPR.But spikes in the long-haired rat population end quickly. Although scientists aren’t exactly sure why, a number of factors are thought to contribute, including inbreeding, an increase in the number of predators and a declining food supply.Although the triple-dip La Niña ended earlier this year, Australia is moving into the wet season, when the rats’ food supply should be ample, University of Sydney environmental sciences professor Peter Banks told the ABC. Bawden told the news agency that he and other local government officials are preparing to cope with wave after wave of tiny, four-legged invaders.“We’re not getting any relief anytime soon,” he said, adding: “We may just have to wait it out.”

The Government Spends Billions on Food. Who Benefits?

Last week, lawmakers in both the House and Senate introduced legislation that could transform the agency’s food purchasing processes, directing the USDA to seek out not just the most affordable foods but also to consider factors including supply chain resiliency, environmental impact, and labor policies when deciding which companies are on the receiving end of […] The post The Government Spends Billions on Food. Who Benefits? appeared first on Civil Eats.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has an array of programs aimed at helping farmers grow food that supports rural communities and the environment, but its own purchasing has long revolved around sourcing the cheapest foods available. Last week, lawmakers in both the House and Senate introduced legislation that could transform the agency’s food purchasing processes, directing the USDA to seek out not just the most affordable foods but also to consider factors including supply chain resiliency, environmental impact, and labor policies when deciding which companies are on the receiving end of the billions of dollars it spends on food each year. “USDA has an opportunity to use its sizable purchasing power to address our agriculture sector’s compounding crisis of agri-business consolidation, climate change, and worker mistreatment,” said Senator Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts), a lead sponsor of the bill in a press release. Called the EFFECTIVE Food Procurement Act, Markey’s proposal follows another bill, the Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act, introduced by John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) in September. After a ramp-up period, Fetterman’s legislation would require the USDA to purchase at least 20 percent of its meat and poultry from small and mid-sized processors and to prioritize contracts with regional producers, socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, and companies that have fair labor agreements in place. Both pieces of legislation, which face long odds of getting included in next year’s farm bill, represent a push to better use federal purchasing power to accelerate progress on goals that the Biden administration has stated are key to its policy vision, including climate action, equity, and improving competition and resilience. And they’re linked to a larger movement to shift institutional and government food purchasing that has taken root in cities and states around the country, said Chloe Waterman, the senior program manager of the climate friendly food program at the nonprofit Friends of the Earth. The organization is one of several environmental, food, and farm groups that joined forces to create the Federal Good Food Purchasing Coalition about a year ago. “We got together and said, ‘We now have a decade’s worth of proof-of-concept for this idea of values-aligned food procurement. The federal government is a way bigger player than any of the cities or municipalities or school districts that we’re working with. So, how can we bring this strategy to the federal level?’” she said. The coalition released its first report earlier this month, which traces how the government spent nearly $17 billion on food in two separate years, 2019 and 2022. And it found that despite an executive order directing agencies to consider greenhouse gas emissions in procurement, another addressing consolidation, and hundreds of millions of dollars granted to small and mid-size farms and processors over the past few years, the government isn’t exactly putting its money where its mouth is. According to the analysis, the USDA is by far the largest purchaser within the federal government, with programs for school meals, domestic hunger, and foreign aid accounting for more than half of total government food spending. In 2022, USDA spent nearly half of its food dollars with just 25 vendors, several of which represent the same multinational food companies the Biden administration has called out for exploiting American farmers. The USDA spent the most money—6 percent of its total purchases, or $270 million—on food from Cargill, which is the country’s largest private company and has long been accused of creating unfair markets for farmers and perpetuating deforestation in South America. Tyson, recently the subject of a major child labor investigation, took in $248 million, including 43 percent of dollars spent on poultry and was among the top five beneficiaries of spending on pork. Interestingly, the largest contracts for beef did not go to any of the country’s biggest meatpackers, although some of the companies are processors that could be sourcing animals from slaughter facilities owned by the big four. (The EFFECTIVE Food Procurement Act would also require the USDA to provide more transparency around its purchasing.) While it wouldn’t affect numbers from the past, the agency did recently commit to only buying red meat from cattle raised in the U.S. But that won’t impact its relationship with JBS USA, a subsidiary of the Brazilian meat giant. In 2022, the USDA spent more than $60 million on pork and chicken from JBS and its poultry company, Pilgrim’s Pride. More than a year ago, lawmakers asked the USDA to end contracts with the company based on accusations of criminal behavior, including bribing government officials and using child labor in its supply chain. However, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack declined, stating that it would “potentially impair” the agency’s ability to secure affordable food. To Waterman, that is precisely why change is necessary. “If we can’t even cut out or suspend purchasing from one vendor who’s a particularly bad actor, what does that say about like the resiliency of that supply chain and the lack of diversification in it?” she said. To illustrate the alternative approach, when Senator Fetterman introduced his bill to diversify the USDA’s meat purchasing, groups supporting the legislation created a map that showed the hundreds of small and mid-size processors that could be tapped instead. Many of those businesses recently received grants from USDA to expand and/or stay open. A map of the small and mid-sized processors that could supply the USDA with its meat needs. The report also analyzed greenhouse gas emissions from USDA purchasing and concluded that shifting more dollars toward plant-based foods (pulses, including beans, lentils, and tofu are a particularly tiny slice of current purchasing) could provide a variety of benefits that match the administration’s priorities. For example, it found that replacing 50 percent of beef purchases with plant-based proteins would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent, land use by 16 percent, water use by 5 percent, and costs by 2 percent. “Our analysis included this cost element to show that you can reduce emissions and save . . . while also achieving benefits along every metric that we included,” Waterman said. To date, more than 200 organizations have endorsed the EFFECTIVE Food Procurement Act, while 65 have endorsed the Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act. But the bills are partisan, with no backing from Republicans. And with the farm bill process punted to next year and still no end in sight on the many spending bills Congress plans to pass, their future remains uncertain. That’s not to say that, if enough momentum built up, the agency couldn’t start to shift its purchases on its own, Waterman said. “Even just from the numbers that we found, it does appear that USDA is moving in the right direction, and they have stated that they share some of the goals of diversifying their supply chains,” she said. “I just don’t think that they’re doing it fast enough.” Read More: Biden Targets Consolidation in the Meat Industry (Again) Institutional Food Has a Sourcing Problem. This Coalition Is Trying to Fix It. How One Groundbreaking Set of Rules is Changing the Food System in L.A. Schools COP28 Kicks Off. Starting tomorrow, world leaders, experts, fossil fuel and agribusiness executives, civil society groups, and activists will officially convene in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for what is being billed as the first global climate summit to pay serious attention to food and agriculture’s role in the conversation. Because it’s also the first COP to be led by an oil company executive who is also using the gathering to strike oil and gas deals, it’s unclear whether it will result in the immediate, dramatic shifts away from fossil fuels that experts say are necessary to curb catastrophic climate outcomes. Last week, the Council of the European Union published a draft of the food systems declaration world leaders are expected to sign; it barely mentions greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and stops far short of getting countries to commit to concrete actions and targets to reduce those emissions. “Anything that does not address emissions at this point is really a disappointment and a cop out,” said Wanjira Mathai, managing director for Africa and global partnerships at the World Resources Institute, during a recent media briefing. The briefing included a panel of experts who said one of their top priorities would be ensuring that small-scale and Indigenous farmers from around the world are given adequate resources and represented in the conversations around food production. A report earlier this month found that while small, family farms produce a third of the world’s food, they have received less than 1 percent of international financing aimed at expanding climate-smart agriculture. Anna Lappé, executive director of the Global Alliance for Future of Food (and a member of the Civil Eats advisory board), said that her group was seeing “a worrying uptick” in food and agrichemical companies putting money into lobbying and public relations campaigns to try to steer the narrative toward what many experts and advocates see as false food-and-climate solutions. “The challenge will be to ensure that vested interests from the energy, food, and agrochemical sectors don’t undermine calls for real solutions,” she said. “We cannot address the planetary crisis without tackling food system emissions, and we can’t phase out fossil fuels without transforming food systems.” Read More: Will a Food and Ag Focus at COP28 Distract From the Fossil Fuel Economy? The IPCC’s Latest Climate Report Is a Final Alarm for Food Systems, Too Is Agroecology Being Coopted by Big Ag? Avoiding the Next Dust Bowl. Sand and dust storms are becoming much more frequent due to climate change, accompanying droughts, and poor land and water management, and two billion tons of sand and dust now enters the atmosphere every year as a result, according to the United Nations’ Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). During a five-day meeting, UNCDD experts released three reports on the storms, one of which is specific to agriculture and includes information on how to reduce its role in desertification and the creation of dust and to minimize impacts on farms. Dust storms have been increasing in frequency and severity in dry western states, and agriculture can contribute to them by leaving fields bare between crops and tilling the soil. In May, dust from tilled farm fields caused a storm in Illinois that led to a 72-car crash in which seven people died. The storms can also destroy crops and harm livestock. Read More: Dust is a Growing Problem. What Role Does Farmland Play? To Prevent the Next Dust Bowl, Give Soil a Chance Unfair Trade. A new report published by Corporate Accountability Lab, an organization that holds businesses accountable for human rights and environmental abuses, shines a light on abuse faced by farmworkers in Mexico—even while working on farms growing certified “responsible” produce. To gather data, food anthropologist James Daria conducted more than 200 in-depth interviews with workers in Mexico’s San Quintín Valley employed by berry farms selling to Driscoll’s and the company that produces the Good Farms and Heritage brands sold at Costco. While the farms were certified by Fair Trade USA and the Equitable Food Initiative, Daria found incidents of forced labor and widespread violations of policies on sexual harassment, wage theft, and retaliation. The workers themselves described the conditions as “21st century slavery.” Annual audits required by the certifying bodies often failed to reveal the system’s shortcomings. Read More: Does Your Food Label Guarantee Fair Farmworkers’ Rights? Why Aren’t Federal Agencies Enforcing Pesticide Rules That Protect Farmworkers? The post The Government Spends Billions on Food. Who Benefits? appeared first on Civil Eats.

US life expectancy no longer catastrophic, now merely bad

A crowd of people gathers in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, in February 2020. | Jeff Swensen/Getty Images 4 big takeaways from the CDC’s new report. US life expectancy increased this past year, from 76.4 to 77.5 years, according to a report published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after declining for two years in a row. It’s not exactly a cause for celebration. America’s life expectancy has been lower than that of other wealthy countries for decades, and declined more than other nations’ during the pandemic. The trends were bad before the pandemic, and awful during it. Now they’re on their way back to being merely bad. As a measure of a nation’s well-being, life expectancy is useful, but its meaning is sometimes misunderstood. Life expectancy isn’t about individual people — it’s about the moments they’re born into. The metric doesn’t refer to the number of years a baby born today can expect to live. Instead, it reflects how long a baby born today would live if nothing in their environment changed over their lifetime. It’s like saying: If every year of this child’s life was like the year 2023, how long would they live? That means that if a baby is born during a period when lots of people are dying at relatively young ages — e.g., during a pandemic or a war — their estimated life expectancy would be lower than if they were born during happier times. And obviously, the baby’s individual life expectancy will change if their environment and conditions change — if the pandemic or war ends, for example. The point is that life expectancy changes in response to the social, cultural, environmental, and political environments countries create. That makes it a helpful tool for tracking the health of nations’ populations over time, and for comparing the health of different countries’ populations. A closer look at this year’s figures offers some pointed reminders that the US’s life expectancy curve isn’t an accident, but a response to choices its elected officials have made. Here are four takeaways from the report. 1) Covid-19 killed fewer people in 2022 than it did in 2021 — but it still killed a lot of people. The historic drop in life expectancy that occurred in the first two years of the pandemic was the worst the US had seen since World War II. The CDC estimates 375,000 Americans died due to Covid-19 infection in 2020, and about 460,000 in 2021 — an almost incomprehensible loss of human potential. In 2022, there were fewer Covid-19 deaths, but still a lot: ​​244,000. This is the main reason for the increase of life expectancy in the CDC report: Covid-19 is killing fewer people. But Covid-19 may also help explain why the US is not yet all the way back up to its pre-pandemic life expectancy of 78.8 years. Most other countries around the world also saw big dips in their life expectancies during the first year of the pandemic. But the US’s decrease was bigger than other countries’ — and its rebound has been slower. The authors of a study assessing pandemic-era life expectancy changes across a range of countries hypothesized that US mortality due to Covid-19 was higher than that in European countries due to higher rates of underlying conditions like obesity and diabetes. A recent analysis by the Washington Post suggests that stalled progress on preventing and treating chronic illness is responsible for the majority of deaths among Americans in their prime. “We’re starting from a lower spot, and we sunk faster than other countries,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a physician and epidemiologist who directs the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s public health school. “And now we’re trying to crawl our way out.” 2) Racial/ethnic groups that lost the most when Covid was at its most lethal had the most to gain as the virus got weaker. The figures in the report suggest certain racial and ethnic groups made particularly big gains in life expectancy. For example, life expectancy went up by 2.3 years for American Indians and Alaska Natives; by 2.2 years for Hispanic Americans; and by 1.6 years for Black Americans. Does this mean the US has fixed health disparities? No. This reflects that those groups that had the highest rates of pandemic-related deaths had the most to gain when Covid-related mortality went down. “Groups had a little bump that was in proportion to the loss that they had,” said Sharfstein. Over the course of the pandemic, American Indians and Alaska Natives died of Covid-19 at more than twice the rate of white Americans, and Black and Hispanic Americans also died at much higher rates. The disproportionate increase in life expectancy in these groups just indicates they were further from their baseline during the worst of the pandemic. 3) Infant mortality rose. It’s likely due to abortion bans and failing maternal health care. Another factor holding down US life expectancy, according to the report, is infant mortality. In 2022, rising death rates due to perinatal conditions (that is, fetal deaths later in pregnancy or newborn deaths ) and congenital malformations kept the topline numbers from creeping higher. That hadn’t been the case in 2021, or in 2020. In fact, in those years, death rates due to these types of conditions actually decreased. This is likely a consequence of ending the constitutional right to abortion, said Sharfstein. “There’s a very strong relationship between access to abortion and infant mortality — and infant mortality went up,” he said. (Multiple studies have linked restrictions to abortion access with higher infant death rates. According to the Society for Family Planning, there were about 32,000 fewer abortions in the six months after the Supreme Court overturned a national right to the procedure in June 2022.) Some of this is related to changes in how doomed pregnancies are managed in the face of criminalized abortion. When OB-GYNs cannot safely provide a full spectrum of medical care, they cannot provide the abortions that would prevent pregnant people from carrying nonviable pregnancies to term. That means pregnancies that previously would have ended long before labor and delivery are instead progressing to birth — and the infants who result from those pregnancies are dying shortly thereafter. But it’s also likely related to the impact of abortion restrictions on the availability of prenatal care — and that directly affects both infant and maternal mortality. As I wrote earlier this month, maternal care providers are leaving states with abortion restrictions, and medical trainees are avoiding these states because they know that in states that don’t permit abortion, they won’t get training in a key part of pregnancy care. Prenatal care reduces the risk of infant death and may also reduce risks to mothers — and a lack of prenatal care increases the risk babies will die. “There’s no question that the reduction in reproductive health care access has implications for population health,” said Sharfstein. 4) Our baseline compared to other countries — both before and after peak pandemic — is low, and we haven’t taken any steps to address the root causes. In 1980, US life expectancy was among the highest in the developed world — now, it’s one of the lowest. There are many possible reasons for this: Compared with other countries, the US’s health care system is one of the most difficult to afford and navigate, and invests less in preventive care than in high-tech treatment. The nation wildly underfunds public health, has a high prevalence of processed foods, and promotes overwork and underrest. And access to guns and opioids has made high rates of death due to both a uniquely American problem. The prevalence of many chronic health conditions — along with smoking cigarettes, another important contributor to premature death and Covid-19 mortality — can be changed by policy choices. “Improving the public health system, rebalancing the health care system more toward prevention, thinking about the social drivers of health more intensely, addressing major social challenges that sometimes are right in front of our eyes and associated with a lot of death,” said Sharfstein — “all of those things are going to be necessary” to improve Americans’ overall health.

A child loved cinnamon applesauce. Then he got lead poisoning.

A Maryland toddler is among the children who developed lead poisoning suspected to be caused by recalled applesauce pouches.

A child loved cinnamon applesauce. Then he got lead poisoning. November 28, 2023 at 6:27 p.m. ESTA packet of lead-tainted apple puree sits on a counter Monday as Sarah Callahan holds her 15-month-old son, Rudy, at their home in Port Republic, Md. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post) Sarah and Ricky Callahan thought nothing of it when a doctor tested their son, Rudy, for lead at a checkup, a routine blood test for all young children in Maryland.But when his levels came back at nearly six times the minimum risk threshold for lead poisoning, they were worried. Surely, there had been a mistake. They had been so careful when it came to their only child, a redhead who loves to build things with blocks and help unload the dishwasher, pulling out all the utensils.Suddenly, their Maryland home felt like what Ricky Callahan described as a “death trap.” Was it the furniture? The carpet? Rudy’s toys? Inspectors checked all of that and more — the water, the dishes, his crib — and found nothing suspect.Months went by, and then a friend at Sarah Callahan’s work in whom she had confided about her son’s lead poisoning forwarded an article about a Food and Drug Administration recall of the same pureed fruit pouches Rudy had eaten for months. A lightbulb went off.“As soon as I read the FDA announcement I knew that was the source of my son’s lead poisoning,” Callahan said in a phone interview from the family’s home in Calvert County, about an hour from Washington.The Food and Drug Administration announced last week that it had received 52 reports of children up to 4 years old potentially exposed to lead in contaminated apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches manufactured by a company in Ecuador and sold under WanaBana, Weis and Schnucks brands. While the FDA won’t identify the affected children, the Callahans reported their concerns to the agency after matching a pouch left in their cupboard to the contaminated lot numbers published last month, according to a copy of their complaint.After weeks without answers, it all added up.Rudy’s lead levels had peaked in a second screening, then dropped as he switched to a whole-foods diet on the advice of experts helping the family work to eliminate potential culprits. A favorite dish is now spinach with cheese and garlic.The FDA said it is still investigating how the pouches were contaminated, but its “leading hypothesis” is that cinnamon — added to the applesauce Rudy loved — is the likely source. Complaints of suspected exposures have been identified in 25 states, the agency has reported, including three cases in Maryland and one in Virginia.The other Maryland cases are from the Eastern Shore and the Baltimore area, said Chase Cook, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Health. He declined to comment on the specifics of any cases.An analysis of multiple lots of WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree detected extremely high concentrations of lead, officials said. Although young children with lead poisoning often show no symptoms, experts say exposure over time can cause lasting neurodevelopmental disabilities.“There is no reason why in 2023 families are dealing with lead poisoning of their toddlers, of their children, because of a fruit puree that claims to be healthy and safe and free of preservatives,” said Nikki Guntner, a Pensacola attorney whose firm, Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz, is working with the Callahans and other parents whose children had elevated lead levels after ingesting contaminated apple puree.WanaBana, the manufacturer, did not respond to questions Monday but in a previous statement said it has initiated a voluntary recall of the affected batches and is working closely with the FDA to investigate the source of the contamination.In a statement, the FDA said it is working with state, federal and international partners to investigate the source of the cinnamon and the point of contamination as well as whether additional products are potentially contaminated. The agency is screening incoming shipments of cinnamon from multiple countries for lead contamination and said it has not yet detected elevated lead in imported cinnamon.“In this instance, the FDA encourages manufacturers that import cinnamon and products that contain cinnamon to be extra vigilant to ensure their products do not contain elevated levels of lead,” agency officials said.While FDA officials said contaminated pouches have been seen on shelves at Dollar Tree stores in multiple states, a Dollar Tree spokeswoman said stores have locked registers to prevent sales of the brand’s pouches and instructed stores to remove the product from shelves.“We are aware of the FDA’s recent report and have worked with our store operations teams to ensure the recalled WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Fruit Puree pouches are no longer in our stores and destroyed according to FDA guidelines,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.Research shows exposure to even small amounts of heavy metals such as lead at an early age may increase the risk of several health problems, as well as prospective long-term cognitive consequences that may not show up for years.Barbara Moore, a pediatric nurse practitioner and director of the lead poisoning program at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital in Baltimore, said a child can ingest or inhale lead particles. The material goes into the bloodstream and crosses the blood-brain barrier, which can affect brain development, leading to lower IQ, speech delays and fine motor delays, and can affect growth. Older children may experience attention-deficit disorder, impulsivity problems and learning problems, she said.A high percentage of environmental investigations show the source has been lead dust or lead paint, Moore said; however, she has noticed more public health alerts for contamination in imported spices.Parents “may feel a twinge of guilt that they thought they were doing something healthy for their children, giving them a healthy pouch,” she said.The FDA has previously warned about high levels of heavy metals in baby and toddler foods. Heavy metals can leach into fruits and vegetables from soil or water contaminated by pesticides, fertilizers and other sources, or they can be introduced to foods as additives and mineral or vitamin mixes. The focus was prompted by a 2021 congressional report that found many of the products made by the country’s largest commercial baby food manufacturers contain significant levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury.Although the agency has set maximum allowable levels of metals such as lead in bottled water, it had not previously regulated levels of metals in baby and toddler foods, with the exception of arsenic in rice cereal — an effort that is now underway.The plans are of little comfort to the Callahans, who began feeding Rudy, now 15 months, the pouches at about 9 months old as he transitioned from breast milk to solid food. They were a regular part of his diet from May through August, and he sometimes consumed as many as six a day, according to Sarah Callahan’s complaint to the FDA.“We took a lot of precautions when picking out his food and … were giving him things which we thought were healthy,” said Ricky Callahan, 36.After Rudy’s first test on Aug. 22, the state lab identified blood lead levels of 19.8 micrograms per deciliter, his parents said. That’s nearly six times the level at which the state identifies children at risk for lead poisoning, 3.5 micrograms per deciliter.The result triggered the state to call the Callahans and made Rudy eligible for close monitoring. A second draw two weeks later on Sept. 1 showed an even higher level, 22.5 micrograms per deciliter, and a few days later they began the new whole-foods diet, the family said. He had his last pouch on Sept. 6.Another two weeks passed, and his next test showed little change, 22.4 micrograms per deciliter. But by Sept. 26, his levels were down to 14.3 micrograms per deciliter, an encouraging sign that the source of the lead was declining.A full month passed before Sarah Callahan read about the applesauce recall on Oct. 30 and scoured their home for pouches, finding one. It matched the contaminated lot numbers reported by WanaBana and the FDA, and she reported the case to the FDA, which prompted the state to call the Callahans again.Through a process of elimination, Sarah Callahan said, officials she has spoken to believe the pouches are very likely the source after two home inspections, a water test, soil test and blood tests of the parents found nothing, and because the new diet helped and the puree batch numbers matched.Even with the probable source identified, the Callahans are on edge, waiting to see if Rudy hits milestones at the same pace as other children his age. The Callahans worked with Calvert County Public Schools on an early intervention plan for Rudy, who has speech delays, and a specialist comes to their home every two weeks to track his development.“I am just concerned about his future,” said Sarah Callahan, 39. “I want the best for my son.”