SC firm files lawsuit over children allegedly poisoned by lead from applesauce
Two young children suffered lifelong disability after eating applesauce pouches contaminated with lead sold by Dollar Tree and Family Dollar, according to a lawsuit filed by a South Carolina law firm.
The lawsuit filed by the Motley Rice law firm of Mount Pleasant claimed WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Fruit Puree included not only lead but chromium.
The lawsuit alleges the lead was purposely added by a supplier of cinnamon in Ecuador and WanaBana had no quality control systems in place to determine the purity of the spice.
The unnamed children, now ages 1 and 3, ate the applesauce from March 2023 to August 2023, the lawsuit says, before a routine checkup found high amounts of lead in their systems.
Testing showed the parents, Nicole Peterson and Thomas Duong, did not have lead in their system and no lead was found in the water at their Hickory, North Carolina home.
“This is a nightmare no parent should ever face,” the parents said in a news release from the law firm. “Knowing that our children will have to live with the effects of lead poisoning for the rest of their lives is heart-wrenching.”
They called it a wake up call to parents of the dangers in everyday food.
The lawyers said Peterson and Duong’s report on elevated blood lead levels helped lead to nationwide investigations and recalls.
WanaBana, which is based in Florida, voluntarily recalled some batches of the applesauce in October 2023, according to its website, and the FDA banned the product the next month, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit says the children will require monitoring for developmental disabilities and for the rest of their lives. Lead exposure can cause behavior and learning problems, lower IQ and hyperactivity, slowed growth, hearing problems, and anemia.
“This lawsuit underscores the critical importance of corporate responsibility in ensuring product safety, especially when the product’s end consumers are vulnerable children,” Motley Rice attorney Nicholas Williams said in a news release.
The CDC has found 300 people have lead contamination from WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Fruit Puree.
A company official did not answer a request for comment, but the website says if people consumed the product they should have a blood lead test since there are no immediate symptoms.
The company said symptoms from short term exposure could be headache, abdominal pain/colic, vomiting and anemia. Long term — irritability, lethargy, fatigue, muscle aches or muscle prickling/burning, occasional abdominal discomfort, constipation, difficulty concentrating/Muscular exhaustion, headache, tremor and weight loss.
Too high levels of lead in the applesauce from the family home was confirmed by the North Carolina State Laboratory of Public Health, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit says as of Jan. 3 the FDA has received 89 complaints. The median age of those reporting was 1 year old.
The Centers for Disease Control has heard from state and local health departments that 385 cases have been found.
The case was filed in Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County, where the company is located. Dollar Tree, which owns Family Dollar, is headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia. They operate more than 16,000 stores in all 48 contiguous states and five provinces in Canada.