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.
> 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.
> 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.
The article makes clear that the initiative, though announced by USAID with other partners, was funded primarily by philanthropy.
> The money – most of it from Open Philanthropy – will go to more than a dozen countries from Indonesia and Uganda to Ghana and Peru.
From other sources, I think the US _financial_ commitment was actually pretty minimal ($4M). But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.
"Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force?
If we were just some average-sized middle-income country, then no one would expect that we should play a disproportionate role in helping things at an international level, or that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity.
> But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty?
I think this is a mischaracterization of parent's point. He didn't say it was strange , and he didn't say we had no role to play.
> that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity
This seems largely orthogonal to parent's point, which I would rephrase as "We can't be police and not police at the same time. If your expectations require us to be both, they're bad expectations."
Ok, so ericmay was not entirely explicit and perhaps we read his point differently.
> then I don’t want to hear a peep about us taking any other actions in the world that we deem just
I think the noteworthy peeps are not about the mere fact that we involve ourselves in the world outside our borders but that we often do it pretty badly. We attack Iraq with "shock and awe" over WMDs that do not exist, and create the Abu Ghraib prison. We drone strike weddings. We set up puppet governments ... for a while. We sign up for climate accords and then back out (multiple times).
I read his point as, "if we have an obligation to fix other people's problems, we shouldn't be subject to complaints when our foreign adventures go wrong".
And I think that's crap; we have both an obligation to try to fix the important problems that wealth or force can fix, and we have an obligation to use both carefully and ethically.
> which I would rephrase as "We can't be police and not police at the same time.
To be clear, in this turmeric story, they did an ad/leaflet campaign about the issue, and then Bangladesh's own Food Safety Authority cracked down. This wasn't about the US enforcing its laws or standards anywhere else. Getting involved and helping to solve a problem doesn't need to mean being the police. And I'm not an expert, but I think almost none of the stuff that flowed through USAID was about being "police".
> I read his point as, "if we have an obligation to fix other people's problems, we shouldn't be subject to complaints when our foreign adventures go wrong".
That's a bad faith reading imo. They said "action we deem just" not "things we mess up".
> Getting involved and helping to solve a problem doesn't need to mean being the police.
It generally does when the source of the problem is people. When you're actively preventing people from doing something, that is "policing". Policing isn't just arresting/shooting/bombing, it's the general enforcement of rules.
> And I'm not an expert, but I think almost none of the stuff that flowed through USAID was about being "police".
That's somewhat beside the point, as the source in both USAID and the "policing" is the US government. You dont name your hand and consider it a different person.
Adding because this has somehow been forgotten around Iraq/911. We attacked Iraq because we were attacked on 9/11. Justification for the attack was stated in part because of American troops in Saudi Arabia. American troops were in Saudi Arabia because of Iraq's prior invasion of Kuwait. Changing the government of Iraq would allow us to remove troops from Saudi Arabia and remove it as a cause for terrorism. This was a discussed cause for going into Iraq at the time, just not the main one everyone publically glommed onto. But there was a reason the US wanted to take out Iraq. Iraq was tied to 9/11 by being an indirect motivator of 9/11.
I’m not going to clarify my post too much because it will lead to a more interesting discussion based on the results I’ve seen so far, but I do want to say I specifically had an issue with the notion, however loosely applied, of assigning blame on the American taxpayer.
With respect to your point about foreign intervention, I actually have come about on Iraq and think that it might have turned out OK if perhaps not worth it monetarily or morally (arguably lying to the American public - I don’t think it’s very arguable but I want to leave room for reasonable discussion) because as I see things today - I think the quality of life in Iraq has improved and frankly they are not under the thumb of a brutal dictator. I wish I knew some folks from Iraq to educate me either way.
With that being said - often times our foreign interventions are seen as good/bad but it just depends on who you ask. We think (and I think) arming Ukraine and Taiwan are good policy - is it? What does China or war-torn Ukraine have to say about that (again with respect to Ukraine please note I am a huge hawk on arming Ukraine against Russia and would advocate for direct US intervention to stop the war), but reasonable people can have differences. The point there just being that sometimes it seems obvious that American taxpayer dollars are well spent but not always. We should just be flexible in that understanding. Just don’t try to assign blame for Americans not wanting to pay for XYZ issue. It’s wrong and counterproductive, in my view.
Not that it matters but thanks to both of you for interesting conversation and dialog.
> The article makes clear that the initiative, though announced by USAID with other partners, was funded primarily by philanthropy.
So, it doesn’t seem like it matters much if USAID was dismantled then.
> But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.
But, if. “Maybe we can make a lot of assumptions about a lot of things and pretend they’re true, and make an argument about it.” Isn’t the play. Not a real point, or something to even debate.
> “Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force.
You completely lost the plot here. You can’t have it both ways. Sure would be pretty neat if _any other country in the WORLD_ stepped up and did… something. Anything. Your argument really died here.
> 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.
Pushing back to remove blame from anybody that could potentially solve the problem? And place it exclusively on those who have all incentives to perpetuate and grow it?
That kind of blind moral grandstanding is why we live in idiocracy.
If a major consumer of a product decides it doesn't care to inspect and regulate an import, the global supply for it gets tainted. You're so busy cutting red tape, you lower the standards everywhere.
I do absolutely agree, it's not your fault that cheaper, dirtier, methods of production are being used, but your lack of standards is a major contributing factor.
This is the reason the EU and UK exclude so much US produce. To allow it would lower local standards too.
The article is principally about tumeric that was brought by individuals into the US, not tumeric that was imported by companies for sale in the US.
Imports are regulated, the FDA actually inspects foreign food facilities that are exporting to the US, and outbreaks are carefully monitored and traced back to their origin.
The problem is present in America, per the article.
‘In the early 2000s, New York City's health department noticed a perplexing blip: A surprisingly large number of Bangladeshi children in New York City were showing up in their lead database.’
For the cost of the research mentioned in the article, that seems a small sum to pay relative to the result achieved.
‘Soft power’ is not valued by many anymore, but cut it all and it’ll be interesting to look back in a generation or two and see the result.
Personally I do value soft power, I specifically take issue with taking away agency from other people and throwing it at the feet of the United States and saying “this is your fault and your problem to fix”. It’s counter productive and that’s why we got rid of USAID. Enough Americans were annoyed about about these exact things. I disagree but sympathize.
I’m not actually sure that the juice is worth the squeeze though with respect to your first paragraph and I think you are stretching. The better argument instead is just the appeal to soft power or Conservative “we need to save the world” sensibilities aka Bush Jr. and AIDS for example.
The article also states that it was mainly tumeric the affected persons imported themselves, not that there is a lead problem with tumeric on US shelves.
Right, I'm 100% against the dismantling of our foreign aid programs, USAID included..
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.
You can also be against American hegemony and include USAID in that while recognising that suddenly stopping it without any attempt to pivot towards a better balance makes no sense for anyone in the world.
I think it’s important for people to educate themselves about USAID. International aid isn’t the point, it’s a channel for shaping the world according to the US’ goals.
For example, look up the role of USAID in the Vietnam war. It was used to fund village self defense forces and the Phoenix program which used targeted apprehension and assassination to combat the Viet Cong. Sure it dug a few wells but net net I don’t think anyone can argue USAID had a positive impact for Vietnam.
USAID is 98% political interference and 2% aid. You’d think people who oppose US interference in other countries would applaud shutting USAID down.
I've always kind of assumed the USA's hegemonic "soft power" (Peace Corps, USAID) was an outgrowth of Civil Affairs Units.
Likewise, I assume the USA's chaotic, neurotic policies are the result of the never-ending food fight between liberals and reactionaries. Reflected in the tortured history of USA's domestic policy making wrt foreign policy. Carrots vs sticks.
Regardless, hegemony is not great. Will a multi-polar world be better (overall)?
Insofar as "soft power" prevents the greater evil of war, I'm all for it. (Per the cliché "war is the failure of diplomacy".) Obviously, reactionary tantrums (neocons, GWOT, Second Gulf War w/ Iraq, total failure in Afghanistan, etc, etc) are complete failures.
Further, I am skeptical that any "soft power" can be more moral than not (on the balance). I acknowledge that the USA (and friends) have managed to pull off a few win/win scenarios, like PERPAR.
For future, I'm for whatever reforms or innovations or governance or moral progress or whatever which supplants hegemony with something better. The prospect of Pax Sinica, Pax Europa, Pax Indica, or whomever, is no more desirable than (our now waning) Pax Americana.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I think actively claiming poisoning is too far. You don't have to do that to not present the story as Problem Solved with a neat little bow tied; I just think like GP there's probably not a really serious evaluation of the underlying issues that led us here, and it's going to crop up again and again in different ways, maybe not tumeric explicitly if monitoring continues.
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."
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.
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!
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, and probably in, say, Switzerland that's exactly what people would do if they had this problem. But here in Argentina, for example, a friend of mine had his house raided by the police because he revealed that the voting machines the country was planning to adopt were flawed and vulnerable to falsified election results. And in the US right now immigrants are getting arrested and deported if they show up to their court hearings to decide whether they should be deported. And you probably remember that, during the covid pandemic, the US government was prohibiting labs from telling people whether their covid tests were positive or negative. So probably this isn't a full replacement for being able to do your own tests.
Specifically what I'm talking about was this, from my bookmarks file, which is mentioned in your CNN story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de... #news from March 10, 02020 how Helen Chu at the University of Washington discovered that covid had spread to #USA. She was running the Seattle Flu Study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in association with the Washington State Department of Health, whose state epidemiologist Dr. Scott Lindquist requested her to test for #covid, but was blocked by the FDA from telling the people who had it, because “the group was not certified to provide test results to anyone outside of their own investigators.” The FDA's repeated refusal was “because the lab was not certified as a clinical laboratory [just a research laboratory, which has much higher standards] under regulations established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a process that could take months.”
The CDC was also trying to develop tests, but the tests they shipped were defective. Meanwhile the Seattle Flu Study sequenced the genome of the virus and discovered that a new variant had arisen. All of this was in late February.
> On March 2, the Seattle Flu Study’s institutional review board at the University of Washington determined that it would be unethical for the researchers not to test and report the results in a public health emergency, Dr. Starita said. Since then, her laboratory has found and reported numerous additional cases, all of which have been confirmed.
But then:
> on Monday night [presumably March 8], state regulators, enforcing Medicare rules, stepped in and again told them to stop until they could finish getting certified as a clinical laboratory, a process that could take many weeks.
Describing this as "unvetted experimental tests" is in some sense technically correct, but it's like describing me checking the voltage at a test point in my power supply with my multimeter as an "unvetted experimental test". Nobody has vetted my test plan, my multimeter may be out of calibration, and I might even not be checking circuit node I think I'm checking.
But if you think that's a valid criticism of what I'm doing, you need to be locked up where you can't harm others.
The main difference is that Helen Chu is the Allergy and Infectious Disease Program Lead at an R1 university, and literally the person who discovered that covid had spread to the US, while I'm not the lead of anything, and nobody will die if I don't find out why this power supply doesn't work until next week, so I don't have an IRB telling me that it's my ethical obligation to measure that test point.
The Trump Administration's handled the covid pandemic like a fucking bunch of clowns, but the CDC and FDA are mostly civil service, and most of the numbskulls who did this are career civil servants, not political appointees.
The US government is a motherfucking glioblastoma of incompetence, and that seriously interferes with well-intentioned, sensible plans like the one proposed by londons_explore.
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.
Yes. I lived there until I was five. Even at that age you learn not to see other people as human. You kind of have to—people do things like cut off kids’ hands to make them more effective at begging.[1] You walk through the street with amputees coming up to you.
That seems like important context for your comment above, which otherwise people might read as akin to Churchill's dismissal of Gandhi as a "naked fakir".
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"!
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 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.
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.
Contaminated spices they have grown up with, yes. One of the insidious things about lead poisoning is that low levels are not that apparent when looking at an individual but still have a significant effect - you wouldn't know if you are less intelligent than you would be without exposure.
Cognitive dissonance is a thing, yes. Would you also be surprised to know that some Americans smoke and don't use seatbelts?
Not every immigrant is a twenty something working on a Masters degree or working in the tech industry. Most of the Bengalis I know, especially in the NYC area, are here by sheer luck and determination moreso than formal education. The older ones have survived famine, cyclones, and literal genocide. At that point, trying to convince someone that their favorite spices or sweets that they grew up with for 40+ years may be harmful is pretty difficult.
If anything, getting to know the immigrant community has been enlightening in pointing out my own biases. It's easy to point the finger at someone else because they're a fish out of water. But put me in a different culture (or really just let time pass with the attendant changes in culture and technology) and the same thing would be true for me.
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.
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.)
Except that it's a different ingredient, that tastes different and works differently. I still use cayenne for some things even though I have fresh chile peppers I don't put fresh ginger in ginger snaps etc.
I wouldn’t call it trivial, no. Pre-boiling it only removes about 50% of the arsenic. If you start with US rice from arsenic-poisoned soils, after boiling the rice you can still have more arsenic in it than rice that had lower levels to start with (even when cooked traditionally).
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.
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."
With the exception of one brand I hadn't heard of (La Flor), every turmeric tested was either safe or in the "some concern" category.
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.
But I wasn't suggesting it would be 'caught at the US border' so much as that if you're buying from big industrial process exporting around the world it's just so much less likely to be an issue to begin with. Article is about relatively small time farmers (processing and perhaps direct selling it themselves) trying to save their failed crop and their livelihood.
It very much is true: I am 'I' and that is what I [don't] 'think'.
Statements I didn't make like 'it has never ever been detected at any level in ...' may well not be true, but on the scale of risks to worry about I do not think this ranks.
For other readers: OJFord doesn't know what s/he's talking about and you should look up tests for the specific brands for the specific spices you're looking to buy, especially if you have children and/or you use spices liberally in your food. The US does not systematically test spices for contamination like this and it does show up in high levels in the American spice supply. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like there are brands that are across-the-board good on contamination.
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.
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.
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.
The Youtube video was also made by the Indian Government. Validating the Indian Government's claim against the Indian Government's same claim (Test 15 in this case) probably doesn't tell us much
Test 15 is the test for powdered tumeric. Of course, their photographs also look photoshopped (the pure and adulterated photos have the exact same pattern near the bottom), which was rather confusing…
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.
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.
I don't know why you're obsessed with whether India has the same problem. Maybe it hasn't been studied as extensively, or the turmeric there is healthier and hence doesn't need to be colored, or something else. Also the article doesn't say that India doesn't have this problem.
Oh i missed "Dhaka" in the sentence after the one that said lead was found in spices in india, my brain saw "[...] spices in india, [...] despite lead free turmeric"
> 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.
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
"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 (...)
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.
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!
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.
[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")
https://aihlabs.com/lead-testing/ doesn't mention food tests and $50 is probably not something most will want to pay every time when buying a new pack.
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?
It's the one below the one ashwinsundar linked, "detection of artificial colour in turmeric powder".
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".
OK, so the method given for artificial coloring on that page. I'm curious if that works for lead chromate. It seems so simple that it must have been tried in this case? Regardless I'll file it away to at least try on stuff to avoid what colors it can detect.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
X-ray fluorescence detects elements based on their characteristic electromagnetic spectrum when irradiated with x-rays.
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.
[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")
The higher it is, the less likely for challenges in detection, and/or interference from background.
>lead concentrations as high as 483 ppm
SSDD.
Shouldn't be that hard to detect at that level which is way above ppb. There are a number of reliable methods.
However if the Minimum Detectable Level for a particular test procedure was only 500 ppm or above, one of these samples would report just as clean as a sample having no lead whatsoever; < 500.
MDL's like this which vary among different test methods do need to be carefully compared to the toxicity levels being screened for.
That's another one of the confounding aspects to be aware of.
Depending on circumstances, I may or may not prefer a different calibration session for each of these two levels, even though they are both within the same order of magnitude.
Either way ideally I would be preparing NIST-traceable reference materials at the proper levels for comparison & confirmation. Not much differently than I would do for the benchtop models and the forklift models of x-ray units. And to really get down into the ppb levels that's when the ICP/mass-spec comes in handy, that's a benchtop unit itself, too big to fit on a regular desk though. However you don't really get the most out of the ICP without a huge cryogenic tank of liquid argon out back so you can "consume mass quantities" ;)
With a handheld x-ray unit, if you are only assaying gold & silver it may be fine to send it back for calibration once a year, if the pawn shops even do that. For food testing I would want more of a laboratory-style analytical procedure and calibration which is concurrent with materials being tested.
I agree that hand-held XRF guns should be able to detect such lead levels, and I believe that was in fact what the police used when they did the publicity stunt in the Bangladesh market. At any rate, it sounds like you know a lot more about the question than I do. I was only disputing pfdietz's comment, "The concentrations of lead being discussed here are as much as 1000 ppm or even higher."
Good call because results should be expectd to be all over the ball park, and I think even higher numbers could be found. But no amount of lead is supposed to be acceptable.
>sounds like you know a lot more about the question
SSDD says it all without explanation, but here's a little.
Until you've spent lots of time at the bench, it's not easy to understand why a 1000 and a 483 might just be the same sample tested in different labs.
Or even the same lab on different days.
If so that would look even more embarrassing when my arbitrary reporting convention < 500 is applied.
But it's actually not unheard of to get a positive and a negative on the same sample even with some of the most sophisticated equipment
Explaining the rest of the story could fill textbooks, but the operators wouldn't be reading them anyway :\
So that's the most important thing to know, besides the actual spectrums which are table stakes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And @dead commenter, yes I'm well aware it's botanically a rhizome, just like ginger. Colloquially, even culinarily, that's not common and it's not particularly helpful to say, many people not knowing what it is, and it's certainly not an important distinction to make here.
I also know tomatoes are fruits, but in the comment section on the importance of eating fruits it would hardly be helpful to give as an example 'yes it's very important to eat plenty of fruit, such as tomato' - it's needlessly confusing when 'apple' would suffice.
I cook a great deal and they could all be classified as fruits for all I care, I'm still going to use them for their flavours/properties which means probably none of them going in a fruit salad.
No, I think it matters about as much as whether python is statically or dynamically typed to a user of an API.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
You can find links on this site going back years to the fact that adulterating turmeric is a common thing if you think you can get away with it and many think they can even do that on exports.
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..
"Lead in Spices, Herbal Remedies, and Ceremonial Powders Sampled from Home Investigations for Children with Elevated Blood Lead Levels — North Carolina, 2011–2018" [2018]
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
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
it's not about education, but rather attention.
how much of your finite attention do you want to spend on extra things? most people already operate under extreme attention-scarcity.
This is why governments exist and what you're proposing is absurd. Do you want to compile a list of every possible threat you are exposed to daily and amend your comment? Sounds like you need to educate yourself on the role of government before you parrot more "competitive market" nonsense.
Yes, that is correct. At least in the west, governments are actually filled with quite earnest, diligent people, not cheating. It's possible to find narrow cases where industry manages to bias government, but it's not like "ignore the lead in this turmeric".
If a business is going to get away with cheating, it seems better that they also need a corrupt government in bed with them rather than just another corrupt business.
> 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.
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
What sort of proper schooling allows one to detect lead in ground turmeric?
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.
if the population was thoroughly educated then I imagine most food would be bought direct from farmers with test published alongside the crop because the population understands the importance of unadulterated food and are armed with the ability to test their food cheaply... once relationships are established with farmers and food providers then the need to test becomes less frequent
I don't have any farmers within a fifty miles of me, I don't think. I live in a major city surrounded by suburbs.
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?
Exactly, we need a label, maybe call it "Nutrition Facts" or something like that which lists all ingredients.
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.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
The article makes clear that the initiative, though announced by USAID with other partners, was funded primarily by philanthropy.
> The money – most of it from Open Philanthropy – will go to more than a dozen countries from Indonesia and Uganda to Ghana and Peru.
From other sources, I think the US _financial_ commitment was actually pretty minimal ($4M). But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.
https://healthpolicy-watch.news/us-government-commits-4-mill...
"Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force?
If we were just some average-sized middle-income country, then no one would expect that we should play a disproportionate role in helping things at an international level, or that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity.
> But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty?
I think this is a mischaracterization of parent's point. He didn't say it was strange , and he didn't say we had no role to play.
> that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity
This seems largely orthogonal to parent's point, which I would rephrase as "We can't be police and not police at the same time. If your expectations require us to be both, they're bad expectations."
Ok, so ericmay was not entirely explicit and perhaps we read his point differently.
> then I don’t want to hear a peep about us taking any other actions in the world that we deem just
I think the noteworthy peeps are not about the mere fact that we involve ourselves in the world outside our borders but that we often do it pretty badly. We attack Iraq with "shock and awe" over WMDs that do not exist, and create the Abu Ghraib prison. We drone strike weddings. We set up puppet governments ... for a while. We sign up for climate accords and then back out (multiple times).
I read his point as, "if we have an obligation to fix other people's problems, we shouldn't be subject to complaints when our foreign adventures go wrong".
And I think that's crap; we have both an obligation to try to fix the important problems that wealth or force can fix, and we have an obligation to use both carefully and ethically.
> which I would rephrase as "We can't be police and not police at the same time.
To be clear, in this turmeric story, they did an ad/leaflet campaign about the issue, and then Bangladesh's own Food Safety Authority cracked down. This wasn't about the US enforcing its laws or standards anywhere else. Getting involved and helping to solve a problem doesn't need to mean being the police. And I'm not an expert, but I think almost none of the stuff that flowed through USAID was about being "police".
> I read his point as, "if we have an obligation to fix other people's problems, we shouldn't be subject to complaints when our foreign adventures go wrong".
That's a bad faith reading imo. They said "action we deem just" not "things we mess up".
> Getting involved and helping to solve a problem doesn't need to mean being the police.
It generally does when the source of the problem is people. When you're actively preventing people from doing something, that is "policing". Policing isn't just arresting/shooting/bombing, it's the general enforcement of rules.
> And I'm not an expert, but I think almost none of the stuff that flowed through USAID was about being "police".
That's somewhat beside the point, as the source in both USAID and the "policing" is the US government. You dont name your hand and consider it a different person.
Adding because this has somehow been forgotten around Iraq/911. We attacked Iraq because we were attacked on 9/11. Justification for the attack was stated in part because of American troops in Saudi Arabia. American troops were in Saudi Arabia because of Iraq's prior invasion of Kuwait. Changing the government of Iraq would allow us to remove troops from Saudi Arabia and remove it as a cause for terrorism. This was a discussed cause for going into Iraq at the time, just not the main one everyone publically glommed onto. But there was a reason the US wanted to take out Iraq. Iraq was tied to 9/11 by being an indirect motivator of 9/11.
> We attacked Iraq because we were attacked on 9/11
Yes, by 15 Saudis, 2 from the United Arab Emirates, one Lebanese and one Egyptian.
Funny old world.
I’m not going to clarify my post too much because it will lead to a more interesting discussion based on the results I’ve seen so far, but I do want to say I specifically had an issue with the notion, however loosely applied, of assigning blame on the American taxpayer.
With respect to your point about foreign intervention, I actually have come about on Iraq and think that it might have turned out OK if perhaps not worth it monetarily or morally (arguably lying to the American public - I don’t think it’s very arguable but I want to leave room for reasonable discussion) because as I see things today - I think the quality of life in Iraq has improved and frankly they are not under the thumb of a brutal dictator. I wish I knew some folks from Iraq to educate me either way.
With that being said - often times our foreign interventions are seen as good/bad but it just depends on who you ask. We think (and I think) arming Ukraine and Taiwan are good policy - is it? What does China or war-torn Ukraine have to say about that (again with respect to Ukraine please note I am a huge hawk on arming Ukraine against Russia and would advocate for direct US intervention to stop the war), but reasonable people can have differences. The point there just being that sometimes it seems obvious that American taxpayer dollars are well spent but not always. We should just be flexible in that understanding. Just don’t try to assign blame for Americans not wanting to pay for XYZ issue. It’s wrong and counterproductive, in my view.
Not that it matters but thanks to both of you for interesting conversation and dialog.
> The article makes clear that the initiative, though announced by USAID with other partners, was funded primarily by philanthropy.
So, it doesn’t seem like it matters much if USAID was dismantled then.
> But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.
But, if. “Maybe we can make a lot of assumptions about a lot of things and pretend they’re true, and make an argument about it.” Isn’t the play. Not a real point, or something to even debate.
> “Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force.
You completely lost the plot here. You can’t have it both ways. Sure would be pretty neat if _any other country in the WORLD_ stepped up and did… something. Anything. Your argument really died here.
> 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.
Pushing back to remove blame from anybody that could potentially solve the problem? And place it exclusively on those who have all incentives to perpetuate and grow it?
That kind of blind moral grandstanding is why we live in idiocracy.
If a major consumer of a product decides it doesn't care to inspect and regulate an import, the global supply for it gets tainted. You're so busy cutting red tape, you lower the standards everywhere.
I do absolutely agree, it's not your fault that cheaper, dirtier, methods of production are being used, but your lack of standards is a major contributing factor.
This is the reason the EU and UK exclude so much US produce. To allow it would lower local standards too.
The article is principally about tumeric that was brought by individuals into the US, not tumeric that was imported by companies for sale in the US.
Imports are regulated, the FDA actually inspects foreign food facilities that are exporting to the US, and outbreaks are carefully monitored and traced back to their origin.
The problem is present in America, per the article.
‘In the early 2000s, New York City's health department noticed a perplexing blip: A surprisingly large number of Bangladeshi children in New York City were showing up in their lead database.’
For the cost of the research mentioned in the article, that seems a small sum to pay relative to the result achieved.
‘Soft power’ is not valued by many anymore, but cut it all and it’ll be interesting to look back in a generation or two and see the result.
Personally I do value soft power, I specifically take issue with taking away agency from other people and throwing it at the feet of the United States and saying “this is your fault and your problem to fix”. It’s counter productive and that’s why we got rid of USAID. Enough Americans were annoyed about about these exact things. I disagree but sympathize.
I’m not actually sure that the juice is worth the squeeze though with respect to your first paragraph and I think you are stretching. The better argument instead is just the appeal to soft power or Conservative “we need to save the world” sensibilities aka Bush Jr. and AIDS for example.
The article also states that it was mainly tumeric the affected persons imported themselves, not that there is a lead problem with tumeric on US shelves.
Right, I'm 100% against the dismantling of our foreign aid programs, USAID included..
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 rest of the world may think it's bad when the CIA does things, and bad when USAID doesn't do things.
The nature of the thing which is being done is relevant.
Yes and if they want to choose what is done they don't get to demand that others do it.
This argument makes absolutely no sense.
You can be against empire x taking action y while being positive it’s taking action z.
You can also be against American hegemony and include USAID in that while recognising that suddenly stopping it without any attempt to pivot towards a better balance makes no sense for anyone in the world.
The world lets us take action y (which they don’t necessarily like) because we do a lot of action z.
No, the US imposes its will on the rest of us by having an awesome arsenal and an eagerness to use it.
The carrot and the stick are both handy. Soft power can make the difference between grumbling and active rebellion.
Yes and we are voluntarily throwing away our soft power.
You forgot freedom and dignity. There is one source for that in the world, the US.
You can flail all day but you won't be able to point to another power that preserves that chance for everyone.
That's impressively ahistorical. How many times have they overthrown a democracy in favour of a US-aligned dictatorship, now?
Iran was a functioning, secularizing democracy until the CIA got involved.
I live somewhere that exemplifies "another power that preserves that chance for everyone".
Streets around here are paved with small brass plaques to remind people of what happens if you fail to preserve that for everyone.
Precisely. If you wanna be the hegemon, you have to act like the hegemon.
I think it’s important for people to educate themselves about USAID. International aid isn’t the point, it’s a channel for shaping the world according to the US’ goals.
For example, look up the role of USAID in the Vietnam war. It was used to fund village self defense forces and the Phoenix program which used targeted apprehension and assassination to combat the Viet Cong. Sure it dug a few wells but net net I don’t think anyone can argue USAID had a positive impact for Vietnam.
USAID is 98% political interference and 2% aid. You’d think people who oppose US interference in other countries would applaud shutting USAID down.
But apparently not.
It's because those people like (some of) the interference USAID has been doing.
You prompted me to learn something about USAID. Thank you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_A...
I've always kind of assumed the USA's hegemonic "soft power" (Peace Corps, USAID) was an outgrowth of Civil Affairs Units.
Likewise, I assume the USA's chaotic, neurotic policies are the result of the never-ending food fight between liberals and reactionaries. Reflected in the tortured history of USA's domestic policy making wrt foreign policy. Carrots vs sticks.
Regardless, hegemony is not great. Will a multi-polar world be better (overall)?
Insofar as "soft power" prevents the greater evil of war, I'm all for it. (Per the cliché "war is the failure of diplomacy".) Obviously, reactionary tantrums (neocons, GWOT, Second Gulf War w/ Iraq, total failure in Afghanistan, etc, etc) are complete failures.
Further, I am skeptical that any "soft power" can be more moral than not (on the balance). I acknowledge that the USA (and friends) have managed to pull off a few win/win scenarios, like PERPAR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Emergency_Plan_f...
For future, I'm for whatever reforms or innovations or governance or moral progress or whatever which supplants hegemony with something better. The prospect of Pax Sinica, Pax Europa, Pax Indica, or whomever, is no more desirable than (our now waning) Pax Americana.
>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
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.
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?
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...
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.
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.
I think actively claiming poisoning is too far. You don't have to do that to not present the story as Problem Solved with a neat little bow tied; I just think like GP there's probably not a really serious evaluation of the underlying issues that led us here, and it's going to crop up again and again in different ways, maybe not tumeric explicitly if monitoring continues.
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."
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.
By it wasn't that long ago, you mean 10 years ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deera_Square
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?
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.
Yeah, NPR is on a rapid course to becoming the third leg to FOX and CNN.
you mean like when those farmers in china poisoned baby formula? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
That's a BS detection step that I apply to anecdotes: who lacks agency in this story?
[dead]
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!
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.
I quite hated it. Very poorly written article with no greys
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."
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.
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.
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.
It would be super cheap to pop a teaspoon in an envelope and post it to a government test lab who has an xrf gun...
Yeah, and probably in, say, Switzerland that's exactly what people would do if they had this problem. But here in Argentina, for example, a friend of mine had his house raided by the police because he revealed that the voting machines the country was planning to adopt were flawed and vulnerable to falsified election results. And in the US right now immigrants are getting arrested and deported if they show up to their court hearings to decide whether they should be deported. And you probably remember that, during the covid pandemic, the US government was prohibiting labs from telling people whether their covid tests were positive or negative. So probably this isn't a full replacement for being able to do your own tests.
> the US government was prohibiting labs from telling people whether their covid tests were positive or negative.
Are you referring to unvetted experimental tests, or something else?
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/politics/coronavirus-testing-...
Specifically what I'm talking about was this, from my bookmarks file, which is mentioned in your CNN story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de... #news from March 10, 02020 how Helen Chu at the University of Washington discovered that covid had spread to #USA. She was running the Seattle Flu Study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in association with the Washington State Department of Health, whose state epidemiologist Dr. Scott Lindquist requested her to test for #covid, but was blocked by the FDA from telling the people who had it, because “the group was not certified to provide test results to anyone outside of their own investigators.” The FDA's repeated refusal was “because the lab was not certified as a clinical laboratory [just a research laboratory, which has much higher standards] under regulations established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a process that could take months.”
The CDC was also trying to develop tests, but the tests they shipped were defective. Meanwhile the Seattle Flu Study sequenced the genome of the virus and discovered that a new variant had arisen. All of this was in late February.
> On March 2, the Seattle Flu Study’s institutional review board at the University of Washington determined that it would be unethical for the researchers not to test and report the results in a public health emergency, Dr. Starita said. Since then, her laboratory has found and reported numerous additional cases, all of which have been confirmed.
But then:
> on Monday night [presumably March 8], state regulators, enforcing Medicare rules, stepped in and again told them to stop until they could finish getting certified as a clinical laboratory, a process that could take many weeks.
Describing this as "unvetted experimental tests" is in some sense technically correct, but it's like describing me checking the voltage at a test point in my power supply with my multimeter as an "unvetted experimental test". Nobody has vetted my test plan, my multimeter may be out of calibration, and I might even not be checking circuit node I think I'm checking.
But if you think that's a valid criticism of what I'm doing, you need to be locked up where you can't harm others.
The main difference is that Helen Chu is the Allergy and Infectious Disease Program Lead at an R1 university, and literally the person who discovered that covid had spread to the US, while I'm not the lead of anything, and nobody will die if I don't find out why this power supply doesn't work until next week, so I don't have an IRB telling me that it's my ethical obligation to measure that test point.
The Trump Administration's handled the covid pandemic like a fucking bunch of clowns, but the CDC and FDA are mostly civil service, and most of the numbskulls who did this are career civil servants, not political appointees.
The US government is a motherfucking glioblastoma of incompetence, and that seriously interferes with well-intentioned, sensible plans like the one proposed by londons_explore.
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.
Of course they know. But human life has very little value in Bangladesh. You’re socialized to desensitize yourself to it.
Your family is from Bangladesh, aren't they?
Yes. I lived there until I was five. Even at that age you learn not to see other people as human. You kind of have to—people do things like cut off kids’ hands to make them more effective at begging.[1] You walk through the street with amputees coming up to you.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jul/31/india.randeepr...
That seems like important context for your comment above, which otherwise people might read as akin to Churchill's dismissal of Gandhi as a "naked fakir".
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"!
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
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 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.
Yes, but that would be "racist".
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.
Eh? Adulteration has been going on for decades, yet your friends deliberately pack light so they can bring back those contaminated spices?
Contaminated spices they have grown up with, yes. One of the insidious things about lead poisoning is that low levels are not that apparent when looking at an individual but still have a significant effect - you wouldn't know if you are less intelligent than you would be without exposure.
Cognitive dissonance is a thing, yes. Would you also be surprised to know that some Americans smoke and don't use seatbelts?
Not every immigrant is a twenty something working on a Masters degree or working in the tech industry. Most of the Bengalis I know, especially in the NYC area, are here by sheer luck and determination moreso than formal education. The older ones have survived famine, cyclones, and literal genocide. At that point, trying to convince someone that their favorite spices or sweets that they grew up with for 40+ years may be harmful is pretty difficult.
If anything, getting to know the immigrant community has been enlightening in pointing out my own biases. It's easy to point the finger at someone else because they're a fish out of water. But put me in a different culture (or really just let time pass with the attendant changes in culture and technology) and the same thing would be true for me.
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.
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.)
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.
Except that it's a different ingredient, that tastes different and works differently. I still use cayenne for some things even though I have fresh chile peppers I don't put fresh ginger in ginger snaps etc.
Diaspora also lab tests theirs, plus the variety they sell has a high curcumin level
isn't arsenic in rice trivial to deal with ("pasta" method)?
I wouldn’t call it trivial, no. Pre-boiling it only removes about 50% of the arsenic. If you start with US rice from arsenic-poisoned soils, after boiling the rice you can still have more arsenic in it than rice that had lower levels to start with (even when cooked traditionally).
One needs both to soak rice for at least 8 hours and boil it in excessive water to remove arsenic.
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.
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."
With the exception of one brand I hadn't heard of (La Flor), every turmeric tested was either safe or in the "some concern" category.
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.
The point is that this (and similar) problems are not categorically caught at the US border.
But I wasn't suggesting it would be 'caught at the US border' so much as that if you're buying from big industrial process exporting around the world it's just so much less likely to be an issue to begin with. Article is about relatively small time farmers (processing and perhaps direct selling it themselves) trying to save their failed crop and their livelihood.
“Less likely,” sure. But way more likely than people would probably intuit.
There are plenty of very mainstream industrial brands with all sorts of contamination.
> I don't think you need to worry buying it from a store that's imported it properly
This statement is not true.
It very much is true: I am 'I' and that is what I [don't] 'think'.
Statements I didn't make like 'it has never ever been detected at any level in ...' may well not be true, but on the scale of risks to worry about I do not think this ranks.
"I think the earth is flat"
No that's not true
"Well it's true that I think that."
You got me!
For other readers: OJFord doesn't know what s/he's talking about and you should look up tests for the specific brands for the specific spices you're looking to buy, especially if you have children and/or you use spices liberally in your food. The US does not systematically test spices for contamination like this and it does show up in high levels in the American spice supply. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like there are brands that are across-the-board good on contamination.
And it will only get worse, given the current political climate.
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.
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.
What radiation source do they use? Could it potentially be a bigger hazard than the spices if you don't handle it properly?
Can someone validate the water test for lead adulterated turmeric? https://youtu.be/tXWPf0HQd5U?si=-SkT4EQB9SvMx7io
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.
The Youtube video was also made by the Indian Government. Validating the Indian Government's claim against the Indian Government's same claim (Test 15 in this case) probably doesn't tell us much
Test 15 is the test for powdered tumeric. Of course, their photographs also look photoshopped (the pure and adulterated photos have the exact same pattern near the bottom), which was rather confusing…
Even without that it's hard to make a judgement of the results without having something to compare it with.
That's for whole turmeric.
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My ChatGPT said lead chromate isn't soluble in water so it's unreliable :(
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.
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.
Then why isn't this an issue in Bharat, as mentioned in the article?
Of course it is an issue. The government has a page to detect adulteration
https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/
I don't know why you're obsessed with whether India has the same problem. Maybe it hasn't been studied as extensively, or the turmeric there is healthier and hence doesn't need to be colored, or something else. Also the article doesn't say that India doesn't have this problem.
Oh i missed "Dhaka" in the sentence after the one that said lead was found in spices in india, my brain saw "[...] spices in india, [...] despite lead free turmeric"
sorry, that's my mistake.
> 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.
I wonder if this has survived the recent cutbacks to USAID?
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/
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.
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!
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...
Thanks for this heads up. This will be useful information for other people with the same idea I had.
A lab such as https://aihlabs.com/ may be able to test food
https://aihlabs.com/lead-testing/ doesn't mention food tests and $50 is probably not something most will want to pay every time when buying a new pack.
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...
There is a much easier and reliable way to test it -> https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/#:~:text=Test%2014%20%3A%2...
Yes indeed. Here's also an instruction video for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXWPf0HQd5U
> Lead Chromate apparently has an extremely low solubility in water, so how does this work?
I don't see any method for lead chromate in turmeric powder, unless I'm missing something.
It's the one below the one ashwinsundar linked, "detection of artificial colour in turmeric powder".
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".
Yeah, I wouldn't trust this test without a reference sample for comparison.
It's used for coloring, because it makes it apparently gives it the same color as good real tumeric
OK, so the method given for artificial coloring on that page. I'm curious if that works for lead chromate. It seems so simple that it must have been tried in this case? Regardless I'll file it away to at least try on stuff to avoid what colors it can detect.
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
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.
Wish there were some way to detect impurities like this at home.
This Indian gov YouTube channel has all kinds of videos for that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXWPf0HQd5U
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
Tumeric isn't something grown locally in most places. And for powder you are pretty much always getting imports.
I think you mean it isn't unrealistically cheap locally, or from reputable certified organic farmers.
Have a great day =3
No I mean it isn't grown locally for sale at all.
https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/#:~:text=Test%2014%20%3A%2...
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.
Pretty hard to see precipitated dust at concentrations in the ppm range.
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.
WP tells me lead chromate's solubility in water is 0.00001720 g/100 mL, so, no, it won't.
I meant lead carbonate, not lead oxide.
I have found lead detection kits. However they are somewhat expensive and I'm not sure how well they work.
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
Those tests are not sensitive enough to check for food contamination.
The contamination is powdered paint containing white lead pigment, and many of these 20ppm to 500ppm test kits are designed for paint surface testing.
If you are color blind and cant see pink very well, than get someone to help or go the lab test route.
Best of luck =3
I think you're the one in need of luck if you're going to rely on paint tests for food safety.
Normal people don't consider paint food, and don't eat the test kits.
The "Do not ingest" labels are on the side for people that may assume otherwise. lol =3
To bad for you that the contaminated turmeric doesn't come with "do not ingest" labels as well.
Hand held x-ray fluorescence spectrometer?
I think those cost more than my entire kitchen.
Hey, if Nile Red can use one, so can you!
And just like that, there was a mad rush of mass-spectrometer-for-home-use startups.
X-ray fluorescence detects elements based on their characteristic electromagnetic spectrum when irradiated with x-rays.
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.
The concentrations of lead being discussed here are as much as 1000 ppm or even higher.
Quoting perihelions's comment above:
[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")
>as much as 1000 ppm or even higher.
The higher it is, the less likely for challenges in detection, and/or interference from background.
>lead concentrations as high as 483 ppm
SSDD.
Shouldn't be that hard to detect at that level which is way above ppb. There are a number of reliable methods.
However if the Minimum Detectable Level for a particular test procedure was only 500 ppm or above, one of these samples would report just as clean as a sample having no lead whatsoever; < 500.
MDL's like this which vary among different test methods do need to be carefully compared to the toxicity levels being screened for.
That's another one of the confounding aspects to be aware of.
Depending on circumstances, I may or may not prefer a different calibration session for each of these two levels, even though they are both within the same order of magnitude.
Either way ideally I would be preparing NIST-traceable reference materials at the proper levels for comparison & confirmation. Not much differently than I would do for the benchtop models and the forklift models of x-ray units. And to really get down into the ppb levels that's when the ICP/mass-spec comes in handy, that's a benchtop unit itself, too big to fit on a regular desk though. However you don't really get the most out of the ICP without a huge cryogenic tank of liquid argon out back so you can "consume mass quantities" ;)
With a handheld x-ray unit, if you are only assaying gold & silver it may be fine to send it back for calibration once a year, if the pawn shops even do that. For food testing I would want more of a laboratory-style analytical procedure and calibration which is concurrent with materials being tested.
I agree that hand-held XRF guns should be able to detect such lead levels, and I believe that was in fact what the police used when they did the publicity stunt in the Bangladesh market. At any rate, it sounds like you know a lot more about the question than I do. I was only disputing pfdietz's comment, "The concentrations of lead being discussed here are as much as 1000 ppm or even higher."
Good call because results should be expectd to be all over the ball park, and I think even higher numbers could be found. But no amount of lead is supposed to be acceptable.
>sounds like you know a lot more about the question
SSDD says it all without explanation, but here's a little.
Until you've spent lots of time at the bench, it's not easy to understand why a 1000 and a 483 might just be the same sample tested in different labs.
Or even the same lab on different days.
If so that would look even more embarrassing when my arbitrary reporting convention < 500 is applied.
But it's actually not unheard of to get a positive and a negative on the same sample even with some of the most sophisticated equipment
Explaining the rest of the story could fill textbooks, but the operators wouldn't be reading them anyway :\
So that's the most important thing to know, besides the actual spectrums which are table stakes.
But of course!
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?
A diet with balanced between cadmium, lead, mercury, arsenic, microplastics and PFAS obviously.
this week, same pigment:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/china/china-lead-poisoning-ti...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I know; it stains teeth and toothbrushes too, requiring a mad amount of brushing and mouthwash to get approximately nowhere.
('My friend' hasn't bought it fresh since!)
And @dead commenter, yes I'm well aware it's botanically a rhizome, just like ginger. Colloquially, even culinarily, that's not common and it's not particularly helpful to say, many people not knowing what it is, and it's certainly not an important distinction to make here.
I also know tomatoes are fruits, but in the comment section on the importance of eating fruits it would hardly be helpful to give as an example 'yes it's very important to eat plenty of fruit, such as tomato' - it's needlessly confusing when 'apple' would suffice.
Is there even any chase outside botany where rhizome vs. root is a meaningful distinction?
At least tomatoes are sometimes treated as culinary fruit.
I cook a great deal and they could all be classified as fruits for all I care, I'm still going to use them for their flavours/properties which means probably none of them going in a fruit salad.
No, I think it matters about as much as whether python is statically or dynamically typed to a user of an API.
I wouldn't call the color of fresh turmeric "dull".
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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.
What's lead used for in cinnamon? It's not supposed to be a particularly colorful spice.
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-...
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!
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.
It was explained in the article.
Because money.
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.
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.
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
<nevermind>
> 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.
There are other instances of lead poisoning and not all turmeric is poisoned.. Therefore everything is a lie?
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.
You can find links on this site going back years to the fact that adulterating turmeric is a common thing if you think you can get away with it and many think they can even do that on exports.
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..
> 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.
"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
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
So rather than have government do the testing and holding producers to account we get every consumer to do it? That sounds pretty inefficient.
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
Great, and how do we know the test results they publish are accurate?
it's not about education, but rather attention. how much of your finite attention do you want to spend on extra things? most people already operate under extreme attention-scarcity.
This is why governments exist and what you're proposing is absurd. Do you want to compile a list of every possible threat you are exposed to daily and amend your comment? Sounds like you need to educate yourself on the role of government before you parrot more "competitive market" nonsense.
FDA and USDA are supposed to do that. It has to be government lead, because we know business will cheat
But government won't cheat?
Yes, that is correct. At least in the west, governments are actually filled with quite earnest, diligent people, not cheating. It's possible to find narrow cases where industry manages to bias government, but it's not like "ignore the lead in this turmeric".
Which is why the current admin is fighting so hard to get rid of the good people
If a business is going to get away with cheating, it seems better that they also need a corrupt government in bed with them rather than just another corrupt business.
yeah, it seems people don't realize the level of corruption that exists in this country... middle management is a workaround for miseducation
not sure which country "this" is, but corruption (taking bribes for harm) is quite uncommon in the US, Canada, Europe, etc.
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> 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.
I wonder if we should think about getting rid of limited liability corporations? Hit the capitalist class where it hurts.
Nothing says well functioning society like the ability to sue someone after you were life alteringly poisoned.
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
What sort of proper schooling allows one to detect lead in ground turmeric?
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.
if the population was thoroughly educated then I imagine most food would be bought direct from farmers with test published alongside the crop because the population understands the importance of unadulterated food and are armed with the ability to test their food cheaply... once relationships are established with farmers and food providers then the need to test becomes less frequent
I don't have any farmers within a fifty miles of me, I don't think. I live in a major city surrounded by suburbs.
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?
Exactly, we need a label, maybe call it "Nutrition Facts" or something like that which lists all ingredients.
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.
>my point is that regulation is a burden
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).
You really don't understand human beings at all, and this is coming from someone who also doesn't understand human beings.
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.
>ban/recall unsafe products.
So you want regulations but you don't want to have to call them regulations. Pretty funny.
...You mean, regulating? Literally the meaning of the word.