A symposium was held at the 2019 American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall National Meeting in San Diego, CA, U.S.A., entitled "Metals Trace Elements in Food Safety, Health, and Food Quality". The 2 day symposium was sponsored by the Division of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (AGFD) and co-sponsored by the Division of Agrochemicals (AGRO). This symposium was convened to broadly cover advances in the detection of metals/trace elements in food and our understanding of how metals and trace elements impact food safety, food quality, toxicology, and human nutrition. There were 21 presentations from speakers from academia, government, and industry. This introduction provides a brief summary of the presentations and serves as a record of the symposium proceedings.