Do leafy vegetables from the store carry unsafe levels of heavy metals?

What's actually in it

Leafy vegetables like spinach, lettuce, kale, and chard are some of the healthiest foods you can eat. But they're also very good at absorbing metals from the soil. Lead, cadmium, arsenic, chromium, and nickel can all end up in the leaves of plants grown in contaminated soil. Urban gardens, fields near highways, and farmland with a history of industrial activity tend to have higher metal levels.

Since greens are eaten raw or lightly cooked, whatever metals are in the leaves goes straight into your body.

What the research says

A 2026 study in Food Chem measured metal concentrations in commonly sold leafy vegetables and calculated health risk scores based on how much people typically eat.

Lead and cadmium were the most frequently detected metals. Some samples had levels that, at normal daily eating amounts, pushed risk scores above the safety threshold. The risk was highest for people who eat large amounts of leafy greens every day.

The contamination varied a lot by location and growing conditions. Vegetables grown in areas with clean soil had much lower metal levels than those from polluted regions. Organic certification didn't always guarantee lower metals, since organic farms can still be on contaminated land.

Washing and cooking can reduce some surface metals, but metals absorbed into the plant's cells can't be rinsed off. Rotating your greens and buying from farms with tested soil are the best strategies.