Minnesota mom sounds alarm after recalled applesauce gives toddler dangerously high levels of lead

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota mother is sounding the alarm after cinnamon applesauce gave her toddler dangerously high levels of lead.

Stevie Magnuson, 15 months old, is slowly but surely expelling the lead from her body that her mother, Alyssa, didn't know at first where it came from.

"I saw an article that the same applesauce that she'd been eating was testing high for lead, so we eliminated that out of her diet," Magnuson said, who's from Pine City.

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating three brands of now-recalled applesauce from Ecuador that have been the suspected culprits in hundreds of cases of lead poisoning in the U.S.

Senator Amy Klobuchar says nine of those cases were in Minnesota.

WanaBana, Weis and Schnucks brand cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches are the recalled products.

RELATED: Most applesauce lead poisonings were in toddlers, FDA says

"This is just a shocker for any parent," Klobuchar said. "You think about Alyssa with [her] precious little girl, and you expect your food to be safe when you're a parent. You expect applesauce of all things, that there's not going to be anything wrong with that."

Klobuchar says she's proposed legislation that would put more rigorous standards on food imported from other countries.

Magnuson says her daughter showed no signs or symptoms of having lead in her system, and it was only a routine checkup that alerted her to what was going on.

Doctors at Children's Minnesota say those regular checks are crucial for small children.

"[At] every one of those physicals, your healthcare provider's looking at [your child's] development, and then at certain ages they're doing blood tests to look for problems like this," said Dr. Abby Montague, a toxicologist and pediatrician.

Magnuson says Stevie's lead levels are roughly a quarter of where they were in October.

She's thankful they caught it early.

Montague says even low levels of lead exposure over a long term can impact kids' brains.

Health officials recommend lead screenings for all children at ages one and two.