Lead pigment in turmeric is the culprit in a global poisoning mystery (2024)

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/09/23/nx-s1-5011028/detectives-mystery-lead-poisoning-new-york-bangladesh

by perihelions • 1 year ago

390 213 1 year ago

npr.org

loopdoend• 1 year ago

Wish there were some way to detect impurities like this at home.

pfdietz3• 1 year ago

Hand held x-ray fluorescence spectrometer?

unixhero• 1 year ago

But of course!

perihelions3• 1 year ago

I think those cost more than my entire kitchen.

jpmattia• 1 year ago

And just like that, there was a mad rush of mass-spectrometer-for-home-use startups.

Joel_Mckay5• 1 year ago

There are very sensitive indicator drops used for identifying ceramic glazes containing lead on antique porcelain.

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

account4219• 1 year ago

Tumeric isn't something grown locally in most places. And for powder you are pretty much always getting imports.

bluGill• 1 year ago

I have found lead detection kits. However they are somewhat expensive and I'm not sure how well they work.

Joel_Mckay5• 1 year ago

Really? Lead test kits are $10 on amazon, and will include several dozen tests. The better kits will include paper to verify the tests still are working (short shelf life in the open.)

The sodium rhodizonate tests usually turn pink in the presence of traces of lead. These tests are intended for testing paints/ceramics, and may have false positives in the presence of zinc or copper etc.

Our local Griefers seem to have strong feelings about this information, but talk with your chemistry teacher if you want to understand the details about testing.

If a credible 3M brand test shows possible contamination, than consider sending a sample into a lab to figure out the details. =3

whiw2• 1 year ago

I am not a chemist, so take this with a pinch of salt: wouldn't lead chromate + sodium bicarbonate make lead carbonate, a white precipitate? Sodium bicarbonate is likely in your kitchen cupboard already.

whiw2• 1 year ago

I meant lead carbonate, not lead oxide.

BenjiWiebe• 1 year ago

Not a chemist either but lead oxide is actually more soluble in water than lead chromate, so a double replacement reaction won't favor lead chromate -> lead oxide.

adrianN• 1 year ago

Pretty hard to see precipitated dust at concentrations in the ppm range.

kragen10• 1 year ago

WP tells me lead chromate's solubility in water is 0.00001720 g/100 mL, so, no, it won't.

ashwinsundar7• 1 year ago

https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/#:~:text=Test%2014%20%3A%2...

gitaarik3• 1 year ago

This Indian gov YouTube channel has all kinds of videos for that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXWPf0HQd5U

vasusen• 1 year ago

I grew up in India and now live in the US. My mom recently got some ground turmeric from our own farm when she visited us. I am was stunned by how much more duller, brownish-yellow it was compared to the turmeric I buy in Indian stores in the US. Those are usually really bright yellows.

Now, I am really scared that even stuff sold in California is probably lead paint tainted turmeric.

genewitch6• 1 year ago

article says "you can't tell when it's ground" - that is, specifically, they put lead chromate in the "buff" stage, so the roots look like they were dried properly.

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.

ashwinsundar7• 1 year ago

No I think the opposite conclusion is correct - turmeric starts out whole, and can be either ground down at that point or dried and sold whole. In the whole state, it's much easier to detect that lead chromate was applied.

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.

toast02• 1 year ago

if the turmeric is ground before sale i doubt there's any reason to use lead chromate.

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.

zargon3• 1 year ago

Burlap and Barrel tests their turmeric for lead and publishes the results. It’s a lot more expensive than Indian store turmeric, but personally I’m no longer willing to buy untested turmeric.

(Relatedly, Lundberg publishes the arsenic levels of their brown rice, so that’s basically the only brand of rice I buy any more.)

markhahn4• 1 year ago

isn't arsenic in rice trivial to deal with ("pasta" method)?

droopyEyelids• 1 year ago

Don’t know what part of the country you’re in, but in Chicago even the basic chain grocery stores carry fresh unprocessed turmeric now.

There’s basically no reason to ever use powdered or dried.

littlexsparkee• 1 year ago

Diaspora also lab tests theirs, plus the variety they sell has a high curcumin level

OJFord7• 1 year ago

I don't think you need to worry buying it from a store that's imported it properly - the article says it was found in the US in Bangladeshi communities where it had been brought back to the US in their suitcases.

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.

zargon3• 1 year ago

If a company doesn’t explicitly state their supply chain controls in situations like this, I’m going to assume they’re possibly inadequate. This is the Amazon era, where things like knowing where what you’re selling came from is considered too much effort.

perihelions3• 1 year ago

No, it's definitely in the US supermarket supply chain (though it's not nearly as bad as in SEA),

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."

oharapj2• 1 year ago

Can someone validate the water test for lead adulterated turmeric? https://youtu.be/tXWPf0HQd5U?si=-SkT4EQB9SvMx7io

GloriousKoji• 1 year ago

I don't follow youtube links during work hours as a personal policy but an India government webpage outlines the water test for whole tumeric: https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/

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.

williamscales3• 1 year ago

I'm curious about getting a personal XRF device for this reason. They don't look "that" expensive, I found some for $5k to $10k on Alibaba. Is it overkill? Probably yes. Am I overly paranoid about my health and would also like to generally have an XRF device? Also yes.

account4219• 1 year ago

What radiation source do they use? Could it potentially be a bigger hazard than the spices if you don't handle it properly?

genewitch6• 1 year ago

hoegarden2• 1 year ago

There are other instances of lead poisoning and not all turmeric is poisoned.. Therefore everything is a lie?

genewitch6• 1 year ago

There's been several turmeric related stories this past week (not here, but i've seen several elsewhere).

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.

ashwinsundar7• 1 year ago

    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.

Yes we have known this is an issue for several years (https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2019/09/lead-found-turmeri...). Maybe you weren't aware.

genewitch6• 1 year ago

Some spice processors in Bangladesh use an industrial lead chromate pigment to imbue turmeric with a bright yellow color prized for curries and other traditional dishes, elevating blood lead levels in Bangladeshis.

thanks for re-iterating what i said.

pengaru2• 1 year ago

if this was an issue we'd have known about it before now.

High-larious. TFA is dated 2024, and I've been reading reports about this practice far longer than that.

pengaru2• 1 year ago

"Lead in Spices, Herbal Remedies, and Ceremonial Powders Sampled from Home Investigations for Children with Elevated Blood Lead Levels — North Carolina, 2011–2018" [2018]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6289082/

"Researchers find lead in turmeric" [2019]

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-turmeric.html

prairieroadent5• 1 year ago

there has to be a way for us as a society to introduce a level of accountability into our so called "food" supply chain without the burden of regulation... perhaps it's as simple as spending more educating our kids about agriculture

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

pirate787• 1 year ago

I support oversight with subscriptions to Consumer Reports and Consumer Labs. I do think government must play a role-- rather than regulate, just regularly test everything and publish the results and ban/recall unsafe products.

salawat• 1 year ago

...You mean, regulating? Literally the meaning of the word.

doodlebugging• 1 year ago

ban/recall unsafe products.

So you want regulations but you don't want to have to call them regulations. Pretty funny.

downrightmike2• 1 year ago

FDA and USDA are supposed to do that. It has to be government lead, because we know business will cheat

SoftTalker• 1 year ago

But government won't cheat?

crazygringo2• 1 year ago

to introduce a level of accountability... without the burden of regulation

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.

prairieroadent5• 1 year ago

my point is that regulation is a burden, not that it isn't the next step... from my point of view regulation is a workaround for our nightmare of an education system where giving kids a proper schooling is considered dangerous and a threat to national security

amanaplanacanal• 1 year ago

I wonder if we should think about getting rid of limited liability corporations? Hit the capitalist class where it hurts.

padjo2• 1 year ago

So rather than have government do the testing and holding producers to account we get every consumer to do it? That sounds pretty inefficient.

prairieroadent5• 1 year ago

I imagine that in a competitive market where the participants are educated that the farmers would publish tests alongside their crop and the educated consumer would understand that they should be buying direct from farmers and be processing the turmeric themselves

ashwinsundar7• 1 year ago

You can buy dried whole turmeric at Indian stores. Take it home and grind it to powder in a magic bullet. Based on the article, it's harder to hide the bright yellow lead chromate coloring when it's used on whole turmeric, versus ground turmeric.

OJFord7• 1 year ago

Article explicitly says it was being added to the whole root during buffing, before grinding.

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.

ashwinsundar7• 1 year ago

Yes but the coloring is easier to visually detect on the whole root, versus the powder (according to article). If you see bright yellow whole turmeric at a store, run away!

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.

Amezarak4• 1 year ago

It can definitely make it into US food.

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.

LarsDu882• 1 year ago

I immediately tested the 5 year old Sadaf tumeric in my kitchen cabinet using a 3M lead testing kit I happened to have in my house. Thankfully it came out negative!

perihelions3• 1 year ago

That doesn't sound technically plausible to me—there aren't any inexpensive tests. Do you mean something like this 3M product[0], that's intended for paint not food, and is documented as "LeadCheck™ Swabs reliabily detect lead in paints at 0.5% (5,000 ppm). 3M™ LeadCheck™ Swabs may indicate lead in some paint films as low as 0.06% (600ppm)."? If so, those aren't remotely suited for this purpose—those detection lower-bounds represent astronomically high amounts of lead, for a food item.

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...

LarsDu882• 1 year ago

Thanks for this heads up. This will be useful information for other people with the same idea I had.

bunderbunder• 1 year ago

Those 3M lead testing kits are designed to detect lead at concentrations on the order of, I don't know, what, like, a million times the limits set in food safety standards?

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/3M-leadche...

ashwinsundar7• 1 year ago

There is a much easier and reliable way to test it -> https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/#:~:text=Test%2014%20%3A%2...

williamscales3• 1 year ago

I don't see any method for lead chromate in turmeric powder, unless I'm missing something.

gitaarik3• 1 year ago

Yes indeed. Here's also an instruction video for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXWPf0HQd5U

tomalpha• 1 year ago

I wonder if this has survived the recent cutbacks to USAID?

    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

lejalv• 1 year ago

    "It is long overdue that the world is coming together," says Samatha Power <https://www.usaid.gov/organization/samantha-power>, who runs USAID.

That is a 404. And the homepage has a Notification of Administrative Leave

    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 (...)

adolph• 1 year ago

The announcement organizations are different from the funding org, Lead Exposure Action Fund, which is funded by Gates Fnd and others.

https://www.leadexposureactionfund.org/about-us/

mandown2308• 1 year ago

What I got by reading the paper: loose tumeric powder and polished tumeric root are the main "culprits" because they are contaminated with Lead Chromate (chemical used in paintings for yellow color.)

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.

phendrenad22• 1 year ago

I think this NPR article is too quick to put a positive spin on this. They have made a nice little story here with a happy ending. Farmers had blackened turmeric -> they used a random yellow die they found -> massive lead spike in everyone's bloodstream -> Americans came in with a xray gun and saved the day -> no more lead in the blood.

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.

shermantanktop• 1 year ago

That's a BS detection step that I apply to anecdotes: who lacks agency in this story?

Amezarak4• 1 year ago

I don't think the NPR reporter is deliberately spinning the story. I think a lot of people don't really believe that other people are really different from them. The reporter would never knowingly poison people for money, so it's not comprehensible to them that lots of people in the world just don't care whether they do or not. The only reason in their minds that people would do such a thing are economic desperation combined with ignorance; if those two factors are gone, they really believe the problem has been forever solved.

a123b456c• 1 year ago

I have numerous experiences being quoted by NPR reporters. I have regularly observed them to deliberately frame stories to interest their audience (as I believe they should). In this case, if the reporter claims poisoning without sufficient evidence, the reporter and their employer will be attacked. If the reporter provides no plausible explanation, the story will be found wanting.

kayodelycaon• 1 year ago

In the course of history, it wasn’t that long ago when people brought snacks to an execution.

That’s a little hard to wrap your head around.

phendrenad22• 1 year ago

I dunno, NPR seems perfectly capable of reporting on crimes in general.

eitally• 1 year ago

Indeed. It reminds me very much of this ("toxic tofu" in Indonesia):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPyRAcdZHDo https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/world/asia/indonesia-tofu...

abeppu3• 1 year ago

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.

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.

ericmay3• 1 year ago

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.

wtcactus2• 1 year ago

What about holding the people that do the crime accountable instead of the ones being continuously extorted into giving their money so that someone else doesn’t do something stupid and/or criminal?

amy214• 1 year ago

Americans have disassembled USAID. The agency of Americans is also contributing to this reccuring.

I didn't realize all non-American societies were doomed to terrible things if not for the pleasure of America's free handouts' interfering

kazinator• 1 year ago

America's main job is to protect its citizens/residents from lead in imported turmeric, not to be a global crusader in wiping out all lead in all turmeric everywhere.

mathgradthrow• 1 year ago

in the article it asserts that the farmers didn't know the effects of lead chromate on human health, they were just "expanding their business".

I guess since it's just fraud and negligence, we should forgive it?

wtcactus2• 1 year ago

Well, it’s more about the origin of the farmers than anything else. If they where American or European farmers, you can be sure NPR would mark them as the villains of this story.

liveoneggs• 1 year ago

you mean like when those farmers in china poisoned baby formula? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

hbarka• 1 year ago

Why do food producers need to do these fake coloring schemes? They are poisoning the well. In this day and age these ugly practices of the past are discoverable. I don’t care for ugly colors if the tradeoff is toxicity.

Aloisius3• 1 year ago

It was explained in the article.

dboreham• 1 year ago

Because money.

infinitifall• 1 year ago

I'm put off by how this is framed as a detective story. Pesticides that contain heavy metals and other carcinogens are a well known issue, with India (and South Asia more generally) being the worst affected.

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!

rayiner2• 1 year ago

Of course they know. But human life has very little value in Bangladesh. You’re socialized to desensitize yourself to it.

kragen10• 1 year ago

Your family is from Bangladesh, aren't they?

londons_explore2• 1 year ago

Heavy metals are so easy and cheap to test for that every distributor should be testing every batch, and calling the police if contamination is detected.

kragen10• 1 year ago

The X-ray fluorescence tests used in the market spectacle described in the article are very cheap and easy, but they require equipment that is very expensive from the perspective of your average Bangladesh greengrocer. There are other easy and cheap tests for heavy metals that don't require such expensive equipment, but they only work if the metal ions are water-soluble, which lead chromate isn't.

offnominal• 1 year ago

I quite enjoyed it. You're in a different part of the world and only have access to lead level data from your local population. You spot an anomaly in a cultural subgroup. Then through extensive guesswork you pinpoint a cause to a specific additive to a spice often consumed by folks in this culture. I would say that qualifies as a detective story.

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.

ujkiolp• 1 year ago

I quite hated it. Very poorly written article with no greys

kragen10• 1 year ago

This isn't about pesticides, and it isn't about not knowing about turmeric; it's about lead chromate, which is not a pesticide, but a pigment, and is not normally a part of turmeric. Moreover, though some of the contaminated turmeric was contaminated by mega-corporations, much of it was not.

Aloisius3• 1 year ago

Em, because it was the farmers who were painting their turmeric with lead paint to make their whole turmeric look more appealing, not "mega-corporations."

wlesieutre• 1 year ago

The article specifically rules out lead from 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

maxerickson• 1 year ago

Uh, the culprit isn't turmeric, it's lead chromate that farmers were putting on turmeric.

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.

in_cahoots3• 1 year ago

But for anyone who knows the Bangladeshi community this isn't a surprise at all. Neither the source nor the way it wakes its way into immigrants diets. Every time my Bengali friends visit Bangladesh they take an empty suitcase to fill with spices, sweets, and the like. The adulteration has been going on for decades.

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.

fakedang• 1 year ago

In most of South Asia, including India and Bangladesh, we were often taught in school that adding lead paint to turmeric is extremely prevalent (along with a number of other adulteration techniques for other foods). We were also taught various tests we could carry out to test food quality.

If there were elevated levels of lead in a South Asian population , and only them, the first thing any reasonable scientist or detective should have looked at was the lead concentration from turmeric usage. Not lead paint, not lead from water pipes.

in_cahoots3• 1 year ago

I asked my Bengali friend, who grew up in a lower-class family in rural Bangladesh. This is something he learned about in schools in the 90's. The test isn't easily available, but it's not like this is a surprise to the Bangladeshi community.

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.

kurthr• 1 year ago

I'm from the US, but I at least vaguely follow food safety. The idea that this poisoning was a surprise is bizarre. It was the absolute first thing I thought of. It is the most common form of corruption. Similar thing just exploded in china with a red dye for children's school food. Like EV olive oil, salmon, and honey a majority of the food is adulterated. You just hope that it's non-toxic.

The real issue is a complete lack of testing or regulation, and I fear soon a loss of "rule of law" in the US. I mean if you bought the right person and airplane or some meme-coin, I'm pretty sure you could sell melamine in baby formula or lead paint in junk food, and it would be blamed on "those damn furriners"!

zh3• 1 year ago

For anyone in the UK concerned about Turmeric, looks like the FSA are on the case (and not just about lead).

https://www.food.gov.uk/research/turmeric-survey

mixmastamyk• 1 year ago

I put our "Ginger and Tumeric"[1] Tea from Trader Joe's into a glass as in Test 15 at: https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/#spices-condiments15

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-...

emmelaich• 1 year ago

Reminds me of the Henna problem. People think / expect Henna to be darker than it is so in some countries they added paraphenylenediamine to it.

Paraphenylenediamine is toxic!

kragen10• 1 year ago

Although the headline sort of reveals the culprit, it's still sort of clickbaity; I think it ought to explain that it was specifically lead chromate added as a yellow pigment to the turmeric in Bangladesh in order to improve its salability, because the best turmeric is naturally a very similar bright yellow.

throwawaymaths• 1 year ago

this week, same pigment:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/china/china-lead-poisoning-ti...

fuzzfactor4• 1 year ago

Not the same exact yellow lead compound, I suspect red lead oxide instead.

I've been suspicious of red lead oxide in paprika for a while now too.

Some paprika just seems so much brighter colored than ever to me.

account4219• 1 year ago

I'd be even more worried about Kashmiri Chili powder which is supposed to be bright red so there would be even more temptation for adulteration if a batch turned out less red than expected.

khelavastr• 1 year ago

Lack of firearms regulations stops public action against lead poisoners. In South America, where street gangs are far more common, you don't see rampant lead pollution the same way.

Nobody dumps lead in narco territories because order of law is so much better enforced than relatively lawless democratic countries like Bangladesh.

tim333• 1 year ago

Meh - we don't have much lead in Sainsburys in the UK in spite of having quite strict gun control. I don't think street gangs are the answer to improving health and safety.

amriksohata• 1 year ago

I can imagine big american pharma pushing this - no doubt lead might have leaked in but they would not want something natural to pip their profits

biohcacker84• 1 year ago

Led, mercury, cadmium and arsenic are showing up in so many foods. In rice in spinach and obvious in fish.

Microplastics and PFAS in fruits and fish and everything else.

And the most recent TV report on cadmium in spinach, I watched, told me to have a diversified diet.

Diversified into WHAT?

account4219• 1 year ago

A diet with balanced between cadmium, lead, mercury, arsenic, microplastics and PFAS obviously.

Lead pigment in turmeric is the culprit in a global poisoning mystery (2024)

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