Welcome to Unbiased Science, where we bring scientific method to the madness.

We're your hosts, Dr. Jess Steyer, and Dr. Sarah Scheinman.

And this week, we are talking about sleep.

And maybe more specifically, we're going to talk about the use of melatonin supplements for sleep.

And we have a very special guest who Sarah will introduce in just one moment. But before we get

into it, a little bit of a public health update that last week, the FDA released findings from

the largest infant formula study of its kind that was assessing for

the safety of infant formula. So super briefly, and we've done a ton of coverage on this,

if you go over, if you check out our social media page, we have a bunch of posts on this,

but they tested 312 samples of baby formula across 16 brands.

The study was initiated in 2023 under the previous FDA administration, and follow-through took two years to build the sample size and complete rigorous lab analyses.

Before you ask, no, brand names were not disclosed because the

goal was to characterize the U.S. formula supply overall, not to single out any specific brands.

They did also test human milk samples for comparison, but those came from a single milk bank,

so not nationally representative or generalizable. But the key takeaway is that

infant formula is overwhelmingly safe. The data are wonderful, really affirming what we've been saying,

what we've known for years, that baby formula is safe. So if you feed your baby infant formula,

you do not need to be concerned. Briefly,

they tested for things like, different contaminants, so things like heavy metals. They tested

for PFS or forever chemicals and also for pesticides. It was something like 99% of samples had no detectable pesticides at all,

including zero detections for glyphosate. When you're looking at things like PFS, we're talking

parts per trillion. So like a drop in 20 Olympic size or wait, I think it's a drop in eight Olympic size pools, actually.

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