The evidence remains
public and inspectable.

ICS maintains the institutional boundary around the evidence system. The underlying literature, source records, and detailed claims remain authoritative on the independent Heavy Metal Index.

STEWARDSHIP, NOT CERTIFICATION MATH

What the corpus covers—not what any product passes.

These figures describe the breadth, provenance, and geographic shape of the literature. They do not encode contamination severity, product ratings, certification thresholds, or brand-level results.

01 / CORPUS

Evidence at a glance

Every total resolves to the public evidence property.

2,547Peer-reviewed studies 179Government reports & datasets 57Programmatic databases 1,503A-tier curated sources 3,041Sources with a DOI 187Jurisdictions 36Contaminant profiles 416Product categories 257Ingredient profiles 176Regulations tracked

02 / GEOGRAPHY

A global problem, unevenly studied

Study density reveals where the published record is deep and where it remains thin.

Studies in the corpus none yetmost

Geographic concentration of the scientific literature ICS indexes — study density, not contamination levels. Lighter regions are under-represented in the global literature (a gap ICS is working to fill), not regions shown to be cleaner. Most-studied: US (1249) · EU (291) · CN (273) · IN (105) · NG (98) · IR (96). The evidence behind every figure lives on the Heavy Metal Index.

03 / CONTAMINANTS

Where the literature concentrates

Ring depth represents source volume, not risk level.

Cadmium1,572 studies Lead1,440 studies Arsenic878 studies Mercury876 studies Chromium871 studies Nickel766 studies Aluminum534 studies Arsenic, Total364 studies Copper314 studies Zinc283 studies Mercury, Total270 studies Tin227 studies

04 / TIME

A deepening, current record

Publication-year coverage shows the cadence of the indexed literature.

Indexed studies by publication year (corpus coverage over time). Source records on the Heavy Metal Index.

PRIMARY EVIDENCE PROPERTY

Inspect the sources,
not only the totals.

Open the Heavy Metal Index