Senior US Senator calls for toxic ingredients to be removed from school lunches

In a surprise announcement this week, a senior U.S. Senator called for toxins to be removed from school lunches. Heavy metals, pesticides and PFAS are among the contaminants being consumed by kids in America's cafeterias. With a bold new bill on the table, reveals the results of exclusive tests showing what's actually being served to kids.

New proposed legislation is being introduced on the front of a Spotlight on America investigation taking a deep dive into what's in school lunches being served to millions of kids every day.

We discovered unseen and largely unregulated components increasingly connected to everything from Attention Deficit Disorder and liver disease, to hormone disruption and cancer.

This week, introduced the Safe School Meals Act, targeting what he called "toxic ingredients" on school trays across America, proposing standards that would keep kids safe from poisons that can't be seen on the plate.

One of the challenges is not just making food available but making sure it's quality, healthy food that's not making our children sick," said Senator Cory Booker. "But we can fight back and make sure kids are getting the safest, most nutritious meals possible, which is why I'm introducing today the Safe School Meals Act.

According to Senator Booker's office, The Safe School Meals Act (SSMA) would protect school children by:

1. Directing the FDA to set safe limits for heavy metals in school meals. The limits would be based on a threshold of reasonable certainty of no harm to school-age children from aggregate exposure. If the agencies fail to set these limits within 2 years, the limits will automatically be set to non-detectable until the agencies can determine a safe level of exposure.
2. Banning glyphosate, paraquat, and organophosphate pesticide residues in school meals. Certified organic farms would automatically meet this requirement.
3. Banning PFAS, phthalates, lead, and bisphenols in food packaging in school meals.
4. Directing FDA to reevaluate food additives with known carcinogenic, reproductive, or developmental health harms, such as artificial food dyes, and ban their use in school meals prior to the completion of FDA's analysis.

Senator Booker's office cites results of testing of school lunches done in 2022 by the nonprofit , that found pesticides, glyphosate and heavy metals in school lunch.

Two years later, Spotlight on America carried out its own exclusive tests with school lunch samples from cafeterias in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia.

We found dozens of pesticides, including those tied to cancer and developmental issues, and heavy metals, known to be toxic to the brain.

Our findings concerned leading experts in the field, including an epidemiologist who has studied pesticides for decades.

"50 pesticides in school lunches, it isn't okay. It really isn't," Dr. Melissa Perry, Dean of the George Mason University of Public Health, told Spotlight on America.

Dr. John Fagan, Chief Scientific Officer of the lab that conducted our tests, told us it's time for Washington to pay attention to our findings.

We should be feeding our children food that is not contaminated with things that can make them sick and interfere with their health and interfere with their ability to grow and evolve and learn," Dr. Fagan said.

With a national conversation now initiated in Washington, we'll reveal our full results on toxins being consumed by kids in school lunches next week on Spotlight on America.

Meantime, we've sent our results to officials at the FDA and EPA to ask whether they are prepared to initiate the process of requiring testing and formulating standards. We haven't heard back yet.