Rambling about recalls

Cinnamon is in season. We're making apple pies with apples harvested from our backyard trees and pumpkin spice lattes are the flavor of the month on the menu at the local coffee shop.

October 2023 marked the start of a nearly year-long process to remove cinnamon that was found to contain lead from store shelves at hundreds of supermarkets and dollar stores.

According to Consumer Reports, "the FDA began testing cinnamon sold at various stores after fruit purée apple pouches by Schnucks, WanaBana, and Weis were linked to cases of lead poisoning in more than 460 children. The cinnamon in the products was determined to be the source of the heavy metal."

The Food and Drug Administration issued an alert on March 6, 2024, warning U.S. consumers not to buy or use certain lots of six brands of ground cinnamon after testing found they contained elevated levels of lead.

That article was updated just a few weeks ago to raise the alarm further. After testing conducted in New York and other states in July and August was confirmed by the FDA, the agency added 11 additional brands of cinnamon to the list of products containing unsafe levels of lead.

If you shop at Dollar Tree or Family Dollar, their Supreme Tradition brand of cinnamon may be affected. Take a look and see if the cinnamon in your spice rack or cupboard is affected, because if you're at all like me, you've had bottles of spices in the cupboard for quite a while. The shelf life of ground cinnamon is two to three years, and cinnamon sticks can last up to five years (although it's not nearly as fragrant or flavorful as it is when it's fresh).

The good news for me is that I don't usually purchase my herbs and spices from dollar stores. I often pick mine up at the local grocery. In New Rockford, fresh spices are now available in bottles bearing the grocery store's brand. For many years before that, some dried herbs were available in plastic cellophane bags labeled with the "Miller's Fresh Foods" logo, and we often purchased them when making jerky, sausage and other home-preserved products.

You can find the full recall notice here: https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/more-ground-cinnamon-products-added-fda-public-health-alert-due-presence-elevated-levels-lead

This certainly isn't the first time I've had to go digging in my pantry in search of recalled products. A few years ago I purchased peanut butter from Costco that was later recalled. The process was simple. I took pictures of the labels and brought them to the Fargo store, where they scanned them and issued a refund.

Of course that was the one time my husband decided we needed not just two, but FOUR large jars of peanut butter. It must have been the holiday baking season or something ...

The FDA recalled 28 beverage products earlier this year as well, due to the presence of undisclosed or potentially harmful ingredients, according to a report from The Daily Mail.

The majority of the recalled drinks – all but four – contained drugs, bacteria or harmful chemicals that were not listed on the product labels. These "undeclared ingredients" included anti-inflammatory medications, toxic metals like arsenic, and carcinogenic food dyes.

So how does a person know they're using or consuming something potentially unsafe?

With food the danger is often readily and quickly apparent, especially when a person falls ill from an affected product.

Thankfully, the Food and Drug Administration does have an online source where citizens can find information about product recalls and illness outbreaks, https://www.foodsafety.gov/recalls-and-outbreaks.

As the FDA notes, recalls are very specific. If a product doesn't match all the information in the recall completely (brand, product name, use or freeze by date, EST number, etc.), then it is not considered part of the recall and is safe to use.

If the product details in the recall notice match the details on the food product you have at home, do not open or consume the product. Instead, do one of the following:

• Return the product to the place of purchase for a refund.

• Dispose of the product following the instructions provided in the recall notice to make sure no one will consume it.

Recalls are such a part of life that we don't always think to check, or know where to look to find out if a product has been affected.

Case in point: I wondered for seven years why the fan on my MacBook would sometimes run constantly, and the bottom would get quite warm after regular use. After a while I just got used to it, then eventually upgraded to a newer model last fall.

As it was still in working condition if I plugged it in and didn't rely on the battery for long, I passed it down to an employee to use.

She mentioned right away the fan and the heat, as well as some performance issues I hadn't recalled noticing. So, I did some research to see if there was a way to fix it or if we needed to just retire it.

I came across a recall notice from Apple support, which according to the date stamp on their website, was released in 2019. Apparently the battery in some MacBooks may overheat and pose a fire safety risk. I had not read anything about the recall in five years, but it did seem to match what I was experiencing with the device.

"Apple has determined that, in a limited number of older generation 15-inch MacBook Pro units, the battery may overheat and pose a fire safety risk. Affected units were sold primarily between September 2015 and February 2017 and product eligibility is determined by the product serial number," the notice states.

Well, that's good information to know now. I apparently need to find time to make a trip to Best Buy so I can see if the Geek Squad will still replace the affected battery. Then maybe we can use that MacBook for another five years.

There's lead in our food, arsenic in our drinks and our devices spontaneously combust. What next?