Now, I am really scared that even stuff sold in California is probably lead paint tainted turmeric.
In the same way that a lot of apples and the like will be buffed and then a soft wax coat applied so lots of apples are very shiny at the store.
if the turmeric is ground before sale i doubt there's any reason to use lead chromate.
If the turmeric is ground before sale, it's even easier to apply lead chromate and make the whole version "appear" healthier to the next processor who grinds it down and then sells the powder. If you buy it whole, then you can more easily see the color of the original root.
sorry, that's my mistake.
If the roots are wholesaled to the grinder, and the grinder doesn't know that bright means poisoned, they might prefer brighter looking roots. The ground tumeric will be poisoned.
Similarly, if the roots are poisoned and discriminating buyers aren't buying then because they're too bright, you can still grind it and sell it, and the color will blend.
(Relatedly, Lundberg publishes the arsenic levels of their brown rice, so that’s basically the only brand of rice I buy any more.)
The difference could be due to sun-drying (I assume?) on your family's farm vs. industrial scale freeze/spray drying, for example. Or some (non-lead, non-colouring) additive that prevents it oxidising and dulling over time perhaps. I think argon is often used (rather than air) in packaging for that purpose.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ("[Consumer Reports] tested 126 products from McCormick, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and other popular brands. Almost a third had heavy metal levels high enough to raise health concerns")
You may (or not) be surprised that there's actually no general testing for heavy metals in US foods, even in categories seriously affected by them—neither by the FDA, nor the private sector.
> "Currently, about two dozen spice companies from 11 countries are subject to import alerts for lead contamination, which signal to regulators that they can detain those products. But that represents a fraction of the herbs and spices shipped to the U.S. In addition, the limited testing the FDA has done on spices has been focused on harmful bacteria, such as salmonella, not heavy metals, Ronholm says."
> "The lack of regulation leaves much of the monitoring of heavy metal levels to companies. [Consumer Reports] contacted all the ones with products in our tests to see how they limited heavy metals."
> "Of the companies that replied to our questions—Al Wadi Al Akhdar, Costco, Bolner’s Fiesta, Gebhardt, Litehouse, McCormick, Roland Foods, Spice Islands, Target, and Whole Foods—a few said they require their suppliers to have a program for controlling or testing for heavy metals. But only three—Al Wadi Al Akhdar, Bolner’s Fiesta, and McCormick—specifically said they test products in their manufacturing plants for heavy metals."
CR does a disservice by not sharing their test levels, but I'm willing to bet my own health that "some concern" is multiple orders of magnitude less lead than what this npr article is about.
> Test 14 : Detection of lead chromate in turmeric whole > Testing Method: > * Add small quantity of turmeric whole in a transparent glass of water. > * Pure turmeric will not leave any colour. > * Adulterated turmeric appears to be bright in colour and leaves colour immediately in water.
The title is "Turmeric is the culprit in a global lead poisoning ..."
That is editorializing. It is a lie. they found that some markets use lead chromate to improve the product's beauty before sale.
The title leads one to believe that all or even most turmeric has lead in it, which just isn't the case.
I'm so sorry you aren't a child in a middle income country?
Most children can be poisoned eventually by a food contamination even if only some percentage of the food is contaminated because most childhoods are years long and most parents don't procure exactly the same supplies..
Since billions of people eat turmeric every day (not the same set, but >1 billion each day, surely), if this was an issue we'd have known about it before now.
thanks for re-iterating what i said.
High-larious. TFA is dated 2024, and I've been reading reports about this practice far longer than that.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6289082/
"Researchers find lead in turmeric" [2019]
amendment: seems to be an unpopular take... my point being regulation is a workaround for a population that is worst than uneducated, miseducated, especially in regards to agriculture and "food" supply chain... if kids were provided with an actual education and not miseducated on the subject then the demand for on-demand food testing would go up, and prices for said testing would eventually go down after supply rises to meet demand increasing competition thus encouraging technological innovations to come in and lower prices
amendment ii: in a competitive market where all participants are thoroughly educated and the consumer is armed with the ability to test their food frequently then a market would likely emerge where consumers buy directly from farmers who out of market forces publish test alongside their crop
So you want regulations but you don't want to have to call them regulations. Pretty funny.
Why? What's wrong with regulation?
The whole point of regulation is safety and accountability and fairness.
Yes things can be over-regulated, but then the solution is to regulate properly, not over-regulate. The reason we don't have libertarian or anarchist societies is because they fundamentally can't solve the problems around safety, accountability, and fairness.
I guess proper schooling would help one understand the analysis techniques, but the machines are pretty expensive and most people don't have one at home.
Regulations that require food products to be regularly surveyed for heavy metals or other contaminants seem more effective than requiring every household to own and operate analysis machines.
Regulations that require foods to be tracked with origin and batch information makes it a lot easier to find out where contaminants entered the system, rather than requiring kids to go around playing Carmen Sandiego. It also helps save money with recalls when there's specific evidence to include only specific batches.
We'd need a way to enforce it though. Maybe make the farmers pinky-swear not to lie on the label because it is cheaper to lie than tell the truth? Do you think that would be enough?
If only there was some kind of group ... or administration even ... specifically tasked with making sure foods are unadulterated. Of course we can't have that though, because that would be regulation and businesses are perfect special little angels and would never ever lie. God forbid we place an evil burden like regulation on a business poisoning all of south-asia with lead.
And how exactly am I going to know the farmer's published tests are correct?
And there aren't cheap tests for everyone to test all their food for thousands of different possible contaminants. That's wishful thinking.
And why do you think testing would need to become less frequent when relationships are established? It's a tried-and-true business technique to gain a reputation of high quality, then rake in the big bucks by switching selling low-quality stuff that people are fooled by.
You can understand why it's about 100,000x more efficient for everyone to say, hey, why don't we hire actual experts and give them the expensive equipment people can't afford on their own to do all these tests for us, and levy huge fines when farmers and corporations adulterate their food or otherwise make it unsafe? And we can call the rules farmers and corporations have to follow "regulations".
I genuinely don't understand why you think it should be legal for farmers to add lead to turmeric and try to sell it, and then put the responsibility on the consumer to test. I mean, do you think it should be legal for people to murder each other, and put the responsibility on others to avoid getting murdered? And if not, then why do you think poisoning people with lead is any different?
By definition. Like a laws against murder are a burden to murderers.
The key to stopping murders isn't "get rid of the murder laws", but fix what made these people people violent (like lead poisoning?). Or in the context of this kind of regulation, the solution isn't to get rid of regulation, but make business account for the costs of their externalities from the beginning (rather than being forced to be moral by the government).
It doesn't seem like something people need to worry about buying it at shops abroad imported properly though - when it was found in the US it was people bringing it home in their luggage.
FYI real, fresh turmeric is a dull orange color with a tan papery skin. It still stains the hands and cutting board when chopped, but that's normal. As the root dries, it turns a dull yellow-orange.
('My friend' hasn't bought it fresh since!)
https://www.cdc.gov/lead-prevention/news/outbreak-applesauce...
There's an example of lead poisoning from cinnamon, another common problem spice. IIRC it was traced to a factory in Argentina.
The highest end of Pb contamination in turmeric in Bangladesh (as in OP) is, from a cursory search, maybe 483 ppm [1]. Regulatory limits in the US are in the low parts-per-billion [2]. This metal bioaccumulates over a lifetime.
[0] (.pdf) https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1581338O/3m-leadcheck-in...
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25214856/ ("Contaminated turmeric is a potential source of lead exposure for children in rural Bangladesh" / "Results: Lead concentrations in many turmeric samples were elevated, with lead concentrations as high as 483 ppm")
[2] https://www.consumerreports.org/babies-kids/baby-food/fda-pr...
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/3M-leadche...
The test is: when you add the powdered turmeric to water, natural turmeric will give the water a "light" yellow color, while adulterated turmeric will give it a "strong" yellow color.
This is not a test that I'd characterize as "easy" or "reliable".
And recently they are celebrating some big news on the lead fighting front: This week, UNICEF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a new $150 million initiative to combat lead poisoning "It is long overdue that the world is coming together," says Samatha Power <https://www.usaid.gov/organization/samantha-power>, who runs USAID.
As of 11:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 23, 2025, all USAID direct hire personnel, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and/or specially designated programs, will be placed on administrative leave globally (...)If you're using branded/packaged tumeric powder, or natural unpolished tumeric root, you're still good as a tumeric consumer in South Asia (though the paper differentiates branded vs packaged tumeric in Table 2, but does not explicitly explain the difference.)
Also, Patna in Bihar is the major source of Lead-adulterated tumeric (in the forms mentioned above) in India, and any exports of tumeric to other places from Patna could be harmful. Lead contamination in Guwahati, Assam is mostly found in imported tumeric from Patna.
But if you ascribe even the slightest but of agency to any of the non-Americans involved, you have to wonder if this problem will come back.
FWIW I've also been quoted by reporters before, and was really upset. They framed what I was saying to mean exactly the opposite of what I was saying, I assume because it fit the story better - I am 100% certain they understood me at the time, because the full context of my remarks made it very clear and we had a long conversation. So I don't lend much credence anymore to things like "what did the people interviewed in this story actually think about anything."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPyRAcdZHDo https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/world/asia/indonesia-tofu...
From the article:
> And recently they are celebrating some big news on the lead fighting front: This week, UNICEF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a new $150 million initiative to combat lead poisoning.
Americans have disassembled USAID. The agency of Americans is also contributing to this reccuring.
I’m going to push back very, very hard on ascribing any sort of blame on anyone other than those who are committing these acts. Least of all the American taxpayer, regardless of whether or not dismantling USAID is a good idea.
If the rest of the world is so helpless that all hope depends on Americans to solve even problems such as this and it’s our fault for not doing so, then I don’t want to hear a peep about us taking any other actions in the world that we deem just. You can’t have it both ways.
However, the world playing both sides of the coin on "US World Police" being bad when it does stuff but also bad when it doesn't do stuff is part of how we end up where we are.
It's a minuscule part of our budget, but an easy sell for right wingers to say "well the world isn't grateful for it and its all a bunch of waste so we are killing it" then get if not majority support, less than 50% disapproval.
The nature of the thing which is being done is relevant.
You can be against empire x taking action y while being positive it’s taking action z.
> You'll never guess the culprit
Not knowing about turmeric comes off as deeply ignorant when a billion people consume it as part of their daily diet.
> They don't know that this is harmful for human health
Let me assure you that they absolutely do and they couldn't care less. This also makes it seem like poor clueless farmers are to blame while mega-corporations that process, package, market and distribute these spices are never given even a passing mention!
Are you referring to unvetted experimental tests, or something else?
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/politics/coronavirus-testing-...
But anyway, lead chromate is not a pesticide. The level of harm from pesticides containing heavy metals vs lead chromate is different. You're probably much much less likely to see lead poisoning levels in your blood just by consuming food treated only with pesticides.
> Perhaps the lead came from agricultural pesticides? "We sampled hundreds of agrochemicals. Did not find lead in them," Forsyth says.
Lead chromate was deliberately added after harvesting to make it more yellow
For most readers of English, it is not an expected fact that someone would be intentionally adding lead to food.
In the article, the turmeric related lead poisonings were due to turmeric bought at Bangladeshi markets, not processed, packaged spices bought from a grocer.
I feel like the article should have been written from that perspective- an outsider discovering how a different community operates and polices itself- instead of from the perspective of some Western saviors uncovering a new problem.
The analogy would be if someone came to the US, found salmonella on some produce, and wrote some breathless article about how they found the 'culprit'. This is business as usual masquerading as a longform news piece.
Unfortunately it looks halfway between the two pictures, although that might be from the Ginger, Orange, and other ingredients. :-/
[1] https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/organic-ginger-...
Paraphenylenediamine is toxic!
loopdoend•5h ago
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jpmattia•4h ago
fuzzfactor•3h ago
Not very much like a mass-spectrometer which creates a characteristic pattern of masses resulting from the test material as it is manipulated by the electron ionization or chemical ionization process. Where ions are detected across the atomic mass range of the particular spectrometer, forming a characteristic pattern or "spectrum" across that range.
Actually more jewelers and gold dealers than ever are using the x-ray guns professionally for bulk assay on an everyday basis. There are some handhelds which may be sensitive enough for trace analysis in food, but that requires a whole nother level of dedication beyond identification of metal objects, not just in technique and training but "laboratory" preparation as well.
The first obstacle would be convincing an owner of an instrument having capable specs, to embrace usage for things other than gold and silver assay. Then seriously pursue mastery of the instrument more so than ever to accomplish decent detection of low levels of lead and other metals like chromium, mercury, cadmium, etc.
pfdietz•1h ago
kragen•1h ago
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25214856/ ("Contaminated turmeric is a potential source of lead exposure for children in rural Bangladesh" / "Results: Lead concentrations in many turmeric samples were elevated, with lead concentrations as high as 483 ppm")
Joel_Mckay•5h ago
There are also handheld scanners that cost more than a car. And yes, people in the community scan every imported toy and or food item they see to start the FDA ban process when necessary. Should buy local when you can anyway. =3
bluGill•4h ago
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXWPf0HQd5U