13 ms·

Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead

174 points by jtc331 5y ago

postpawl 5y ago
All the thymes and oreganos? Wow
- DantesKite 5y ago
  I read somewhere that tea leaves are great at absorbing fluoride from the ground.
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  The good news is both of them are easy to grow indoors or outdoors, and they're perennial. Perennial herbs include rosemary, lavender, marjoram, tarragon, sage, mint, parsely, lemon balm, chives, sorrel, yarrow, chicory, savory, bay laurel, lovage, hyssop, anise, chamomile, bergamot, alfalfa, clover... the list goes on. You can use them fresh, or make your own dried herbs. On top of that, variants of thyme work as a hearty no-hassle replacement for grass, and it even flowers.
  - christophilus 5y ago
    Do you have a recommended place to get those? Also, I’ve got clay soil here, and thyme has never done well for me. I’d love to replace swaths of my lawn with it, as I really like it’s appearance and fragrance, so any link to those varieties would be much appreciated.
    - mattmoose21 5y ago
      I’ve been looking at doing something similar and the best advice I’ve found is from a local agricultural school and some local businesses that supply native plants in your area.
    - throwaway984393 5y ago
      Clay soil's definitely not gonna work for thyme, it's way too wet and nutrient-dense. You could try double-digging to remediate it, but that could possibly lead to other issues. Here's some links I found for ground cover plants good for clay: https://gardening.stackexchange.com/a/7665 https://gardening.stackexchange.com/a/7665 https://gardentabs.com/ground-cover-plants-for-clay-soil/ https://gardentabs.com/ground-cover-plants-for-clay-soil/ As for where to get stuff, search for plant nurseries near you. They may not be tech-savvy so you might have to use the old-fashioned technique of wandering around and asking people (anyone who works in dirt: farmers, gardeners/landscapers, contractors). They will know your local environment and what works best for it and can order plants and seeds for you.
    - gramie 5y ago
      It may not be practical for you, but you could try a hydroponic system like AeroGarden. I was given one last Christmas and grew lots of herbs (I've just moved and haven't unpacked it, but when I do the herbs will be coming out again). AeroGarden is a pricy brand, but there are probably cheaper ones that do just as well.
  - jffry 5y ago
    A tangential word of warning for anybody feeling inspired to DIY some fresh herbs: mint spreads very aggressively. If you want to plant some, put it in a pot on a patio or pavement to stop it from getting into the ground. If you do not, in a few years you'll have mint growing absolutely everywhere.
    - willismichael 5y ago
      You say that like it is a bad thing... Mostly kidding, I grew up living at a rural property that had mint all over the place. I loved it, but I do understand how much trouble invasive plants can cause.
- jobe_br 5y ago
  Pretty easy to grow your own, from seed even, but most plant nurseries will have these in their herb section.
  - Aardwolf 5y ago
    Any risk of getting those elements in them if you grow them yourself, through the soil, water, fertilizer, products or the seeds?
    - the-pigeon 5y ago
      Absolutely. To be really certain you'd have to test your soil. I don't think you could test seeds without destroying them. But if your soil was clean then you could grow a plant from potentially contaminated seeds and that plants seeds would be far less contaminated.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      what about hydroponics
      - robbedpeter 5y ago
        Probably the only reasonable way of guaranteeing clean plant food sources is to use hydroponics, and to manufacture fertilizer yourself. Distilling water is easy, and buying the chemicals for fertilizer seems doable. But you'll want to make your own hdpe containers, and silicone tubing, so you don't get unlisted phthalates or plasticizer. GRAS and "food safe" classifications are fine, for things that are actually looked for, but mistakes are made, and most failures seem to favor producers, not consumers. The question boils down to the actual harms you're mitigating and what constitutes the appropriate response.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - dsizzle 5y ago
    It's not clear where the heavy metals are coming from. One possibility mentioned in the article is the soil itself. I wonder if even potting soil is tested for heavy metals? If heavy metals get through whatever food testing is done by the FDA, McCormick, etc., I don't have great confidence that soil testing is any better. That said, I would think growing your own is safer.
- BostonEnginerd 5y ago
  I wonder if those plants are just particularly good at leaching lead from soil. Phytoremediation is an area of active study for cleaning toxic soils.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Arsenic in rice is due to exactly that, pulling naturally occurring arsenic from the water used for irrigation.
    - hinkley 5y ago
      Not the only source. American rice is grown sometimes on old cotton fields, which were sprayed with arsenic to control boll weevils. Apparently washing the rice does remove quite a bit.
      - andrekandre 5y ago
        washing and also soaking for several hours/overnight and/or boiling it with lots of water (and pouring it out) can greatly reduce it iirc btw, afaik, naturally, brown rice has more has alot, basmati rice seems to have the least https://sites.dartmouth.edu/arsenicandyou/arsenic-in-rice-and-rice-products/ https://sites.dartmouth.edu/arsenicandyou/arsenic-in-rice-an...
        hinkley 5y ago
        The study I saw implied that most of the metals were on the surface as dust, so you could rinse about 60% off. I would expect the bran, containing a lot of the protein and minerals, would have more in it, and also make it more difficult to remove surface contamination. Incidentally there are also some studies challenging the heavy metals in broadleaf plants link. The newer studies suggest surface contamination is a much bigger factor. That's also another 'pro' in the column for cleaning your vegetables with white vinegar instead of soap. Acids are pretty good at dissolving metal dust, especially from residual contamination near roads from leaded gas. My yard tested high.
Eelongate 5y ago
> CONSUMER REPORTS tested 126 herbs and spices from 38 brands for arsenic, cadmium, and lead. (We did not test spices that tend to be used in baking, such as cinnamon and nutmeg.) We tested two or three samples from different lots of each product. This testing is frustratingly sparse, couldn't they find garlic powder in Trader Joe's? They're missing many brands for many of these spices. And I don't think you can bake heavy metals out of food, so why did they omit cinnamon? What is a concerned consumer like myself supposed to do now? Eat food without spices? Buy test kits and test spices myself? I guess I could write a letter to my congresspeople to tell the FDA to do their goddamn jobs, but I don't expect that to work.
- oasisbob 5y ago
  I find it frustrating that they didn't test many foreign brands, but recommend against import nonetheless. Laxmi Turmeric is the one Indian (for import) spice brand I recognize on the list. Testing Devi, and the other common import brands, as well as true desi brands would have been interesting. "Curry powder" is a weird one to test. Might as well compare Italian blends as well.
- smegger001 5y ago
  You mean you expect the government to fund themselves enough to actually do there job?
  - Eelongate 5y ago
    How much did CR spend to buy these spices? A few hundred dollars? A thousand at most? I don't know how much the tests themselves cost to run, but I can find lead test kits on Amazon for under $20. The biggest cost would doubtlessly be manpower so.. put some interns on the job? But yes, I expect the FDA's lame excuse will be "Gee wiz we wish we could do our jobs but we need another billion dollars for what you're suggesting." Such is the way with the American government.
    - dgut 5y ago
      With * government.
_abox 5y ago
> In 31 products, levels of lead were so high that they exceeded the maximum amount anyone should have in a day, according to CR’s experts. Uhh there is no amount of lead anyone should have in a day. It's cumulative and harmful and we don't need it for anything. > Think twice about bringing back herbs and spices from travel abroad. Heavy metal content can be much higher in those products, according to other research. U.S. companies may buy the highest-quality herbs and spices to import, Ronholm says, which could leave lower-quality versions to be sold in the country of origin. Depends from where of course. I'm pretty sure the EU has stricter food safety regulations than the US. Though enforcement varies by country.
- oasisbob 5y ago
  > Uhh there is no amount of lead anyone should have in a day That's very easy to say, but it's another thing to require that products with lead above the level of detection should be kept from markets and destroyed. Start clearing products with any detectable heavy metal content, and you'll start clearing shelves.
  - zamfi 5y ago
    > Start clearing products with any detectable heavy metal content, and you'll start clearing shelves. Great. And maybe then producers will take it more seriously?
    - formerly_proven 5y ago
      Clean, pre-industrial air contains about 1 ng lead per m³ which is easily detectable. This means you can detect lead in any thing that lives or has lived.
- nradov 5y ago
  Lead is present in the natural environment. Avoid it as much as you reasonably can, but it's impossible to eliminate it entirely from your diet.
- refurb 5y ago
doitLP 5y ago
I hate this. I’m up to my eyeballs trying to keep my newborn away from all the toxic shit that’s in every part of his life, BP* in plastics, flame retardants in clothes and mattresses and rugs, heavy metals in baby food and now in herbs, micro plastics in food, radioactivity and mercury in farmland around coal fired power plants, etc etc etc. The negative externalities on dangerous chemicals is so very high; what am I supposed to do, test my fucking pepper? The burden of safety is squarely on the consumer after it’s already too late to prevent. I don’t know what to do anymore. At this point it’s safe to assume he is ingesting poisons that affect child organ and brain development in everything.
- birksherty 5y ago
  Best solution is to not having kids. This is if you think for the kids first. There is no reason to have kids that is for the benefit of the potential child. But nobody likes that. People's selfish wish always comes first before the potential kid's benefit. So kids will have these toxins in their body in the end and any problem that comes with it.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Existence feels like a benefit over non-existence. But this is a philosophical problem rather than a measurement problem.
    - oigursh 5y ago
      I'm of the opinion that the suffering we do as a race isn't worth the creativity and pleasure. Plus if you don't exist, you don't know what you're missing out on.
      - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
        Then kill yourself. Otherwise, shut the fuck up - you clearly value life.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
donatj 5y ago
> Grow and dry your own. That might be a particularly good idea if you use a lot of basil Growing your own food to avoid heavy metals is actually horrible advice. To be done safely you need to get your soil tested; especially in more urban areas your soil is often just as bad or worse than the soil these were grown in. Remember, burying used motor oil after an oil change rather than recycling it was common practice late into the twentieth century.
- nimih 5y ago
  Testing your soil is relatively inexpensive[1] and pretty straightforward to do. Further, if the goal is to grow herbs, you can easily stick to gardening in containers or raised beds, where you get to completely control the growing medium. If you're in an urban area, those are probably the most realistic options for you anyways. [1] https://www.sites.google.com/site/healthygardeners/testing-labs-results https://www.sites.google.com/site/healthygardeners/testing-l... reports that costs range from $10-$200, depending on the accuracy and range of tests you're interested in.
  - donatj 5y ago
    Spending potentially a couple hundred dollars to grow a couple dollars worth of spices is a big ask.
    - nimih 5y ago
      Luckily, you can spend a couple dozen dollars instead. Or do the other thing I mentioned where you don't worry about soil contaminants at all. Of course, we're on a tech forum full of highly paid professionals, talking not about living frugally, but about avoiding heavy metal ingestion. Spending $200 up front to replace a weekly $2-10 recurring expense (i.e. buying those same herbs fresh from a local grocer) seems eminently reasonable for this audience if it's in the service of improving overall health.
sparker72678 5y ago
The cumulative increase in anxiety this article is likely to cause is going to drown out the negative health effects of the elements themselves. I'm all for cleaning up production, our food, and all the rest. But trying to make everyone afraid of everything, all the time, is not actually helpful.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Nobody's going to clean anything up unless they feel like it's worth paying attention.
perihelions 5y ago
Here's the hazard values sorted by brand, for brands with 3 or more products listed: ["365 Whole Foods Market", [0, 0, 0, 1, 1]] ["Badia", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1]] ["El Guapo", [0, 0, 0]] ["Great Value", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]] ["Happy Belly", [0, 0, 3]] ["Kirkland Signature", [0, 0, 1]] ["La Flor", [0, 0, 1, 3, 3]] ["McCormick", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]] ["Morton & Bassett", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1]] ["Penzeys Spices", [0, 0, 0, 0, 1]] ["Sadaf", [0, 0, 0, 0, 1]] ["Simply Organic", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1]] ["Spice Islands", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2]] ["Tone’s", [0, 1, 2]] Here's a Ruby snippet to mine the relevant data from the OP page, as csv: require 'nokogiri' doc = Nokogiri::HTML(File.open(ARGV[0]).read) doc.xpath('//div[@class="OneWholeSpice"]').map do |nd| spice = nd.xpath('div[@class="spiceTitleBar"]').first.inner_text # workaround for one missing </div> nd.xpath('//div[@class="OneWholeSpice"]').each {|nd| nd.remove} brands = nd.xpath('.//ul[@class="spBrand"]/..').each do |nd| brand = nd.xpath('.//span[@class="sbCopybld"]').first.inner_text.strip rating = nd.xpath('.//div[@class="noReccommendCircle"] | .//div[@class="noReccommendCircleKey"]').length puts "\"#{spice}\",\"#{brand}\",#{rating}" end end
MrYellowP 5y ago
I'm so glad I live in Austria.
- stephenitis 5y ago
  The spice selection is so minimal here in Austria. Grocery shopping feels a little more sane though. I don’t get lost in the aisles of stuff.
throwaway599281 5y ago
>Open a drawer or cabinet in any kitchen in the U.S When will Americans actually implement proper consumer rights and enforcing the laws that guarantee the quality of goods for sale? Isn't that one of the FDA's responsibilities?
phendrenad2 5y ago
Why do these articles never bother to mention or even speculate on how heavy METAL got into a bunch of crushed LEAVES. It boggles the mind. Is it obvious to everyone but me? Are we supposed to not wonder? Does nobody know the mechanism?
- mark-r 5y ago
  You do know that plants pull their nutrients from the soil, right? How is a plant to differentiate a nutrient from a poison?
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    Yes but how did the heavy metals get into the soil? If I grow herbs in my backyard, will they also be contaminated? There's more to the story and a good old fashioned "five why's" would be nice.
xyzzy21 5y ago
Yes. And "earth biscuit" loved kale is a #1 concentrator of cadmium as well - it's part of it's genome as a plant. You can't completely avoid these things. Similarly radiation is unavoidable even if we never had discovered the bomb. And with the threat a magnet pole reversal, that could become a major thing for a few 100-1000 years. What doesn't kill you makes you and yours stronger. Also the first part of the article about "reducing salt" - it turns out the 1950s papers on the connection between salt and cardiovascular disease is so flawed as Design of Experiment and execution that it borders on fraud. The origin cholesterol and cardio paper has the same flaws and probably should not be taken seriously. Correlation is not causation but BAD correlation due to fundamental study flaws certainly isn't. Add to this the "linear thinking" usually used to justify treatments and habits to change, when metabolic systems are HIGHLY nonlinear and pretty much the entire medical profession deserves a FAIL.
- mark-r 5y ago
  Do you know why they add iodine to (iodized) salt? The nuclear testing we did way back when put so much radioactive iodine into the atmosphere, it was getting into the soil and taken up by the plants we were eating. The body excretes excess iodine, so putting non-radioactive iodine in the salt allowed our bodies to eliminate some of the radioactive stuff.
  - momdad420 5y ago
    Idk about the nuclear testing putting "radioactive iodine" in the atmosphere, but as for the addition of iodine to salt, that's not the origin. It was added to prevent health issues from iodine deficiency, such as goiters. In fact the invention of iodized salt predates the invention of the atomic bomb by several decades. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509517/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509517/
b9r5 5y ago
One lab that regularly tests for heavy metals, albeit in dietary supplements rather than spices, is ConsumerLab [0]. Their detailed findings are behind a paywall, which is unfortunate, but probably necessary for them to provide the service. And there is little public funding in the US for testing food for heavy metals. [0] https://www.consumerlab.com/ https://www.consumerlab.com/
oregano 5y ago
Looks like myself and Thyme have some serious detox to do. Seriously though- I’m a pretty picky shopper - exclusively organic (when at all possible) for any/all foods regardless of cost. Even herbs and spices. Seeing oregano and thyme fail all tests is very concerning. My initial thought is to try to pivot to fresh herbs but I’m not sure that option is necessarily safer.

174 points by jtc331 5y ago

postpawl 5y ago

All the thymes and oreganos? Wow

DantesKite 5y ago
I read somewhere that tea leaves are great at absorbing fluoride from the ground.
throwaway984393 5y ago
The good news is both of them are easy to grow indoors or outdoors, and they're perennial. Perennial herbs include rosemary, lavender, marjoram, tarragon, sage, mint, parsely, lemon balm, chives, sorrel, yarrow, chicory, savory, bay laurel, lovage, hyssop, anise, chamomile, bergamot, alfalfa, clover... the list goes on. You can use them fresh, or make your own dried herbs. On top of that, variants of thyme work as a hearty no-hassle replacement for grass, and it even flowers.
- christophilus 5y ago
  Do you have a recommended place to get those? Also, I’ve got clay soil here, and thyme has never done well for me. I’d love to replace swaths of my lawn with it, as I really like it’s appearance and fragrance, so any link to those varieties would be much appreciated.
  - mattmoose21 5y ago
    I’ve been looking at doing something similar and the best advice I’ve found is from a local agricultural school and some local businesses that supply native plants in your area.
  - throwaway984393 5y ago
    Clay soil's definitely not gonna work for thyme, it's way too wet and nutrient-dense. You could try double-digging to remediate it, but that could possibly lead to other issues. Here's some links I found for ground cover plants good for clay: https://gardening.stackexchange.com/a/7665 https://gardening.stackexchange.com/a/7665 https://gardentabs.com/ground-cover-plants-for-clay-soil/ https://gardentabs.com/ground-cover-plants-for-clay-soil/ As for where to get stuff, search for plant nurseries near you. They may not be tech-savvy so you might have to use the old-fashioned technique of wandering around and asking people (anyone who works in dirt: farmers, gardeners/landscapers, contractors). They will know your local environment and what works best for it and can order plants and seeds for you.
  - gramie 5y ago
    It may not be practical for you, but you could try a hydroponic system like AeroGarden. I was given one last Christmas and grew lots of herbs (I've just moved and haven't unpacked it, but when I do the herbs will be coming out again). AeroGarden is a pricy brand, but there are probably cheaper ones that do just as well.
- jffry 5y ago
  A tangential word of warning for anybody feeling inspired to DIY some fresh herbs: mint spreads very aggressively. If you want to plant some, put it in a pot on a patio or pavement to stop it from getting into the ground. If you do not, in a few years you'll have mint growing absolutely everywhere.
  - willismichael 5y ago
    You say that like it is a bad thing... Mostly kidding, I grew up living at a rural property that had mint all over the place. I loved it, but I do understand how much trouble invasive plants can cause.
jobe_br 5y ago
Pretty easy to grow your own, from seed even, but most plant nurseries will have these in their herb section.
- Aardwolf 5y ago
  Any risk of getting those elements in them if you grow them yourself, through the soil, water, fertilizer, products or the seeds?
  - the-pigeon 5y ago
    Absolutely. To be really certain you'd have to test your soil. I don't think you could test seeds without destroying them. But if your soil was clean then you could grow a plant from potentially contaminated seeds and that plants seeds would be far less contaminated.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    what about hydroponics
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      Probably the only reasonable way of guaranteeing clean plant food sources is to use hydroponics, and to manufacture fertilizer yourself. Distilling water is easy, and buying the chemicals for fertilizer seems doable. But you'll want to make your own hdpe containers, and silicone tubing, so you don't get unlisted phthalates or plasticizer. GRAS and "food safe" classifications are fine, for things that are actually looked for, but mistakes are made, and most failures seem to favor producers, not consumers. The question boils down to the actual harms you're mitigating and what constitutes the appropriate response.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- dsizzle 5y ago
  It's not clear where the heavy metals are coming from. One possibility mentioned in the article is the soil itself. I wonder if even potting soil is tested for heavy metals? If heavy metals get through whatever food testing is done by the FDA, McCormick, etc., I don't have great confidence that soil testing is any better. That said, I would think growing your own is safer.
BostonEnginerd 5y ago
I wonder if those plants are just particularly good at leaching lead from soil. Phytoremediation is an area of active study for cleaning toxic soils.
- refurb 5y ago
  Arsenic in rice is due to exactly that, pulling naturally occurring arsenic from the water used for irrigation.
  - hinkley 5y ago
    Not the only source. American rice is grown sometimes on old cotton fields, which were sprayed with arsenic to control boll weevils. Apparently washing the rice does remove quite a bit.
    - andrekandre 5y ago
      washing and also soaking for several hours/overnight and/or boiling it with lots of water (and pouring it out) can greatly reduce it iirc btw, afaik, naturally, brown rice has more has alot, basmati rice seems to have the least https://sites.dartmouth.edu/arsenicandyou/arsenic-in-rice-and-rice-products/ https://sites.dartmouth.edu/arsenicandyou/arsenic-in-rice-an...
      - hinkley 5y ago
        The study I saw implied that most of the metals were on the surface as dust, so you could rinse about 60% off. I would expect the bran, containing a lot of the protein and minerals, would have more in it, and also make it more difficult to remove surface contamination. Incidentally there are also some studies challenging the heavy metals in broadleaf plants link. The newer studies suggest surface contamination is a much bigger factor. That's also another 'pro' in the column for cleaning your vegetables with white vinegar instead of soap. Acids are pretty good at dissolving metal dust, especially from residual contamination near roads from leaded gas. My yard tested high.

Eelongate 5y ago

> CONSUMER REPORTS tested 126 herbs and spices from 38 brands for arsenic, cadmium, and lead. (We did not test spices that tend to be used in baking, such as cinnamon and nutmeg.) We tested two or three samples from different lots of each product. This testing is frustratingly sparse, couldn't they find garlic powder in Trader Joe's? They're missing many brands for many of these spices. And I don't think you can bake heavy metals out of food, so why did they omit cinnamon? What is a concerned consumer like myself supposed to do now? Eat food without spices? Buy test kits and test spices myself? I guess I could write a letter to my congresspeople to tell the FDA to do their goddamn jobs, but I don't expect that to work.

oasisbob 5y ago
I find it frustrating that they didn't test many foreign brands, but recommend against import nonetheless. Laxmi Turmeric is the one Indian (for import) spice brand I recognize on the list. Testing Devi, and the other common import brands, as well as true desi brands would have been interesting. "Curry powder" is a weird one to test. Might as well compare Italian blends as well.
smegger001 5y ago
You mean you expect the government to fund themselves enough to actually do there job?
- Eelongate 5y ago
  How much did CR spend to buy these spices? A few hundred dollars? A thousand at most? I don't know how much the tests themselves cost to run, but I can find lead test kits on Amazon for under $20. The biggest cost would doubtlessly be manpower so.. put some interns on the job? But yes, I expect the FDA's lame excuse will be "Gee wiz we wish we could do our jobs but we need another billion dollars for what you're suggesting." Such is the way with the American government.
  - dgut 5y ago
    With * government.

_abox 5y ago

> In 31 products, levels of lead were so high that they exceeded the maximum amount anyone should have in a day, according to CR’s experts. Uhh there is no amount of lead anyone should have in a day. It's cumulative and harmful and we don't need it for anything. > Think twice about bringing back herbs and spices from travel abroad. Heavy metal content can be much higher in those products, according to other research. U.S. companies may buy the highest-quality herbs and spices to import, Ronholm says, which could leave lower-quality versions to be sold in the country of origin. Depends from where of course. I'm pretty sure the EU has stricter food safety regulations than the US. Though enforcement varies by country.

oasisbob 5y ago
> Uhh there is no amount of lead anyone should have in a day That's very easy to say, but it's another thing to require that products with lead above the level of detection should be kept from markets and destroyed. Start clearing products with any detectable heavy metal content, and you'll start clearing shelves.
- zamfi 5y ago
  > Start clearing products with any detectable heavy metal content, and you'll start clearing shelves. Great. And maybe then producers will take it more seriously?
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    Clean, pre-industrial air contains about 1 ng lead per m³ which is easily detectable. This means you can detect lead in any thing that lives or has lived.
nradov 5y ago
Lead is present in the natural environment. Avoid it as much as you reasonably can, but it's impossible to eliminate it entirely from your diet.
refurb 5y ago

doitLP 5y ago

I hate this. I’m up to my eyeballs trying to keep my newborn away from all the toxic shit that’s in every part of his life, BP* in plastics, flame retardants in clothes and mattresses and rugs, heavy metals in baby food and now in herbs, micro plastics in food, radioactivity and mercury in farmland around coal fired power plants, etc etc etc. The negative externalities on dangerous chemicals is so very high; what am I supposed to do, test my fucking pepper? The burden of safety is squarely on the consumer after it’s already too late to prevent. I don’t know what to do anymore. At this point it’s safe to assume he is ingesting poisons that affect child organ and brain development in everything.

birksherty 5y ago
Best solution is to not having kids. This is if you think for the kids first. There is no reason to have kids that is for the benefit of the potential child. But nobody likes that. People's selfish wish always comes first before the potential kid's benefit. So kids will have these toxins in their body in the end and any problem that comes with it.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Existence feels like a benefit over non-existence. But this is a philosophical problem rather than a measurement problem.
  - oigursh 5y ago
    I'm of the opinion that the suffering we do as a race isn't worth the creativity and pleasure. Plus if you don't exist, you don't know what you're missing out on.
    - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
      Then kill yourself. Otherwise, shut the fuck up - you clearly value life.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

donatj 5y ago

> Grow and dry your own. That might be a particularly good idea if you use a lot of basil Growing your own food to avoid heavy metals is actually horrible advice. To be done safely you need to get your soil tested; especially in more urban areas your soil is often just as bad or worse than the soil these were grown in. Remember, burying used motor oil after an oil change rather than recycling it was common practice late into the twentieth century.

nimih 5y ago
Testing your soil is relatively inexpensive[1] and pretty straightforward to do. Further, if the goal is to grow herbs, you can easily stick to gardening in containers or raised beds, where you get to completely control the growing medium. If you're in an urban area, those are probably the most realistic options for you anyways. [1] https://www.sites.google.com/site/healthygardeners/testing-labs-results https://www.sites.google.com/site/healthygardeners/testing-l... reports that costs range from $10-$200, depending on the accuracy and range of tests you're interested in.
- donatj 5y ago
  Spending potentially a couple hundred dollars to grow a couple dollars worth of spices is a big ask.
  - nimih 5y ago
    Luckily, you can spend a couple dozen dollars instead. Or do the other thing I mentioned where you don't worry about soil contaminants at all. Of course, we're on a tech forum full of highly paid professionals, talking not about living frugally, but about avoiding heavy metal ingestion. Spending $200 up front to replace a weekly $2-10 recurring expense (i.e. buying those same herbs fresh from a local grocer) seems eminently reasonable for this audience if it's in the service of improving overall health.

sparker72678 5y ago

The cumulative increase in anxiety this article is likely to cause is going to drown out the negative health effects of the elements themselves. I'm all for cleaning up production, our food, and all the rest. But trying to make everyone afraid of everything, all the time, is not actually helpful.

whatshisface 5y ago
Nobody's going to clean anything up unless they feel like it's worth paying attention.

perihelions 5y ago

Here's the hazard values sorted by brand, for brands with 3 or more products listed: ["365 Whole Foods Market", [0, 0, 0, 1, 1]] ["Badia", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1]] ["El Guapo", [0, 0, 0]] ["Great Value", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]] ["Happy Belly", [0, 0, 3]] ["Kirkland Signature", [0, 0, 1]] ["La Flor", [0, 0, 1, 3, 3]] ["McCormick", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]] ["Morton & Bassett", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1]] ["Penzeys Spices", [0, 0, 0, 0, 1]] ["Sadaf", [0, 0, 0, 0, 1]] ["Simply Organic", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1]] ["Spice Islands", [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2]] ["Tone’s", [0, 1, 2]] Here's a Ruby snippet to mine the relevant data from the OP page, as csv: require 'nokogiri' doc = Nokogiri::HTML(File.open(ARGV[0]).read) doc.xpath('//div[@class="OneWholeSpice"]').map do |nd| spice = nd.xpath('div[@class="spiceTitleBar"]').first.inner_text # workaround for one missing </div> nd.xpath('//div[@class="OneWholeSpice"]').each {|nd| nd.remove} brands = nd.xpath('.//ul[@class="spBrand"]/..').each do |nd| brand = nd.xpath('.//span[@class="sbCopybld"]').first.inner_text.strip rating = nd.xpath('.//div[@class="noReccommendCircle"] | .//div[@class="noReccommendCircleKey"]').length puts "\"#{spice}\",\"#{brand}\",#{rating}" end end

MrYellowP 5y ago

I'm so glad I live in Austria.

stephenitis 5y ago
The spice selection is so minimal here in Austria. Grocery shopping feels a little more sane though. I don’t get lost in the aisles of stuff.

throwaway599281 5y ago

>Open a drawer or cabinet in any kitchen in the U.S When will Americans actually implement proper consumer rights and enforcing the laws that guarantee the quality of goods for sale? Isn't that one of the FDA's responsibilities?

phendrenad2 5y ago

Why do these articles never bother to mention or even speculate on how heavy METAL got into a bunch of crushed LEAVES. It boggles the mind. Is it obvious to everyone but me? Are we supposed to not wonder? Does nobody know the mechanism?

mark-r 5y ago
You do know that plants pull their nutrients from the soil, right? How is a plant to differentiate a nutrient from a poison?
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Yes but how did the heavy metals get into the soil? If I grow herbs in my backyard, will they also be contaminated? There's more to the story and a good old fashioned "five why's" would be nice.

xyzzy21 5y ago

Yes. And "earth biscuit" loved kale is a #1 concentrator of cadmium as well - it's part of it's genome as a plant. You can't completely avoid these things. Similarly radiation is unavoidable even if we never had discovered the bomb. And with the threat a magnet pole reversal, that could become a major thing for a few 100-1000 years. What doesn't kill you makes you and yours stronger. Also the first part of the article about "reducing salt" - it turns out the 1950s papers on the connection between salt and cardiovascular disease is so flawed as Design of Experiment and execution that it borders on fraud. The origin cholesterol and cardio paper has the same flaws and probably should not be taken seriously. Correlation is not causation but BAD correlation due to fundamental study flaws certainly isn't. Add to this the "linear thinking" usually used to justify treatments and habits to change, when metabolic systems are HIGHLY nonlinear and pretty much the entire medical profession deserves a FAIL.

mark-r 5y ago
Do you know why they add iodine to (iodized) salt? The nuclear testing we did way back when put so much radioactive iodine into the atmosphere, it was getting into the soil and taken up by the plants we were eating. The body excretes excess iodine, so putting non-radioactive iodine in the salt allowed our bodies to eliminate some of the radioactive stuff.
- momdad420 5y ago
  Idk about the nuclear testing putting "radioactive iodine" in the atmosphere, but as for the addition of iodine to salt, that's not the origin. It was added to prevent health issues from iodine deficiency, such as goiters. In fact the invention of iodized salt predates the invention of the atomic bomb by several decades. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509517/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509517/

b9r5 5y ago

One lab that regularly tests for heavy metals, albeit in dietary supplements rather than spices, is ConsumerLab [0]. Their detailed findings are behind a paywall, which is unfortunate, but probably necessary for them to provide the service. And there is little public funding in the US for testing food for heavy metals. [0] https://www.consumerlab.com/ https://www.consumerlab.com/

oregano 5y ago

Looks like myself and Thyme have some serious detox to do. Seriously though- I’m a pretty picky shopper - exclusively organic (when at all possible) for any/all foods regardless of cost. Even herbs and spices. Seeing oregano and thyme fail all tests is very concerning. My initial thought is to try to pivot to fresh herbs but I’m not sure that option is necessarily safer.