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How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
- kashunstva 3y agohttps://archive.vn/vlj7u https://archive.vn/vlj7u
- WesolyKubeczek 3y agoFor some reason I’ve been solving recaptchas in vain only to be asked to solve a recaptcha again.
- cevn 3y agoI think it has to do with archive.is and cloudflare dns being incompatible
- zelphirkalt 3y agoThen why have cloudflare running "on" it?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LinuxBender 3y agoThey do not. Archive.is gives back the IP for Cloudflare if the DNS request comes from Cloudflare. There are previous discussions here I dont have the link handy about how the admin of Archive.is does not like that Cloudflare does not forward EDNS Client Subnet information so they give CF their own IP. This causes the client to go to CF despite Archive.is not being a customer of them. It's the effect of Archive.is banning Cloudflare for not giving up Client Subnet information. The end result is being directed to CF despite Archive.is not being behind them and thus one getting into captcha loops. On a fun side note, the admin of Archive.is that is here on HN read my blog on how to block their site with 2 IPTables rules and updated their nodes in Russia to a more standard MSS of 1460 and added some more CIDR blocks. I assume the rest of their nodes will follow soon. Well played.
- alesso_x 3y agoI have to turn off apple private relay to avoid the recaptcha loop.
- greenie_beans 3y agome too. can't access anything on archive.ph
- dang 3y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139138.
- f311a 3y agoCan someone archive it?
- freetime2 3y agofyi you can archive it, too. Just go to archive.is, paste in the link, and hit save. https://archive.is/p6FGg https://archive.is/p6FGg
- markdown 3y ago[flagged]
- NotGMan 3y agoTLDR: they use deadly chemicals to give it/fake a more yellow color because people think it's better if it's more yellow.
- Lacerda69 3y ago>Recent estimates suggest a staggering 815m children—one in three of the global total—have been poisoned by the metal. This is insane, hard to believe tumeric is the main culprit. But then again lots of these children probsbly live in India, where the leadtumeric seems to be most popular.
- djmips 3y agoThe wording they used was 'major' culprit. They also said "The poisoning has many causes."
- svnt 3y agoLeaded gasoline has remained legal until fairly recently in a surprising number of countries in and around the middle east. It is still used in aviation fuel. The soil contamination from this is probably part of the issue with similar high levels of lead in chocolate products.
- HumanReadable 3y agolead paint is the other big culprit. For those looking to hasten the end of lead poisoning, the Lead Exposure Elimination Project (https://leadelimination.org/ https://leadelimination.org/) does great work.
- patja 3y agoAnd despite being illegal, lead is still in the majority of paint tested in India
- atleastoptimal 3y agoIt's not just India or Bangladesh. Lots of brands sold in the US are tainted with lead: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2016/08/six-brands-of-turmeric-added-to-recall-for-excessive-lead/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2016/08/six-brands-of-turmeri... There are tests you can do at home, like leaving the powder in water and seeing if it leaves a yellow streak separate to the powder.
- Reason077 3y agoThis sounds like a one-off incident that was caught by testing. Given increased awareness of the issue, it seems unlikely that any turmeric you buy in the US today would be contaminated.
- perihelions 3y agoRather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals, because the food industry tends not to test for them and there's little regulation: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herbs-and-spices-might-contain-arsenic-cadmium-and-lead-a6246621494/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ("Your Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead: CR 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.") Just from this month, there's a major recall of children's food in the United States that's contaminated with "extremely high concentrations of lead"—enough to cause acute toxicity. No one had ever tested these food products. This contamination was found after the fact, very late, because multiple children in North Carolina were chronically lead-poisoned, to the degree that state public health did an epidemiological investigation and tracked down the culprits. https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/investigation-elevated-lead-levels-applesauce-pouches-november-2023 https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/investi... ("Investigation of Elevated Lead Levels: Applesauce Pouches (November 2023)")
- Reason077 3y ago> ”Rather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals” Sure, but usually it’s because products are grown in contaminated soil and “naturally” pick up traces from their environment. Pretty much all rice contains arsenic, for example, but the concentration varies significantly depending on where it’s grown and how it’s processed. The turmeric problem is different because lead has been deliberately added during processing, and it’s been found in relatively huge quantities - as much as 2-10% by weight in some cases!
- acqbu 3y agoSpices don't kill people. People kill people.
- eternityforest 3y agoBy contaminating spices on purpose apparently
- beeforpork 3y agoTitle is misleading: it's lead chromate (that producers mix into turmeric power) that does the killing, not turmeric.
- willwinger 3y agoVery well identified, the cropping up of such an article should not be taken at face value. Consider such scenarios too which impact profit of specific industries namely Pharma 1. Demand for curcumin has greatly increased leading to an inflation of its market price in recent years 2. Turmeric is an age old go to antiseptic and antibiotic. During Covid it was very common for Indian families to consume turmeric flavored milk as a way of keeping the virus out. Almost all health, medicinal, sensational articles irrespective of their source publication have to be put under the critical lens of global corporate profit motive Am I saying there is no adulteration, am not. Just that the publishing intent is no saint either.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> the cropping up of such an article should not be taken at face value. I assume the article appeared because recently the government of Bangladesh and/or India declared a big political victory over turmeric adulteration. Where there are ten articles, it's not a big surprise that there are 11 articles.
- uwagar 3y agoi've always felt economist is always anti-asian, particularly anti-indian.
- botanical 3y agoThey are more pro-West even if it means anti-everyone else; and even if it means spouting pro-war rhetoric. To me, they are a western propaganda mouthpiece.
- uptownfunk 3y agoYes I’ve seen the same in the last several years and hence why I stopped reading them
- freetime2 3y ago> Yet adulterated turmeric looks like a major culprit almost everywhere, chiefly owing to poor practice in India, which produces 75% of the spice. It’s really shocking to me that in the year 2023 people could be intentionally adding lead to food products at this scale. Is this mainly due to greed and corruption? Ignorance? Distrust of modern medicine and health advice? I suppose it’s similar to the problem of people dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but the effects of poisoning people with lead just feel so much more direct and malicious.
- JaDogg 3y agoThis is a common practice. There are deception at every level. See my comments from before - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=JaDogg https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=JaDogg
- pseudo0 3y agoIt is reminiscent of the Austrian antifreeze wine scandal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Austrian_diethylene_glycol_wine_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Austrian_diethylene_gly... That was only a few wineries though, and it was pretty quickly caught and harshly punished. This is apparently a whole industry where the practice of poisoning consumers with lead is normalized.
- lqet 3y ago> As a consequence of the scandal, a total of 27,000,000 litres of wine (corresponding to 36 million bottles or seven months' worth of Austria's total wine exports at the pre-1985 level) had to be destroyed by the West German authorities, which had confiscated or otherwise collected the wine. Doing this in an environmentally acceptable way proved challenging because DEG was incompatible with sewage treatment plants. In the end, the wine was disposed of and destroyed by being poured into the ovens of a cement plant as a cooling agent instead of water. In Austria, it was reported that the wine, mixed with other agents, was used as a road antifreeze in the particularly severe continental winter of February to March 1986. According to the German Wikipedia, authorities in Austria first became suspicious when a small winegrower attempted to deduct large quantities of antifreeze from his taxes, although he only owned a single small tractor.
- Havoc 3y agoReminds me of the China milk scandal.
- ka_me_ha_me_ha 3y agoFor context, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
- alephnerd 3y agoPretty much. India is essentially China 15-17 years ago (both a good and a bad thing). Demographics, FDI, HDI, GDP per Capita, Infrastrucutre investment, the kinds of scandals, and even the kind of criticism seen against India in 2023 are very similar to what you'd see about China in the early 2000s.
- mikrotikker 3y agoOr the plastic rice. Or the pigs painted black. Or the fermented tofu that is just dyed. Chinese saying: "if you can cheat, then cheat"
- CommanderData 3y agoThese people have little to no regard to human life when they're adding lead chromate to an international spice. We all have likely eaten Turmeric in the last year alone it's added to many foods aside from curries i.e. processed snacks and as a filler for foods. Capital punishment would be too good these folk.
- otikik 3y agoClose their business, put them in jail.
- supriyo-biswas 3y agoIn India, it is usually small-time tradesmen that are involved in the act of adulteration, and any action is likely to be considered as an attack on small businesses.
- lakomen 3y agoI don't really care what it's being considered as. They poison people for profit. Atrocious, it's essentially long term mass murder including children.
- alephnerd 3y agoIn India, elections can be flipped by margins of only a couple thousand voters. This is why enforcement might be lax. Local enforcement doesn't want to mess with small businesses or unions (eg. Auto rickshaw unions) lest they lose their seat. Stuff like this will continue to happen for 2 generations (and maybe even longer). Look at China as an example, and even South Korea. They are 15 and 40 years ahead of India respectively and even they have had issues Food and Drug safety to this day.
- otikik 3y agoI am no political expert, but “my opponent is harming your children’s health” seems like it can move some votes.
- alephnerd 3y agoAnd then a week later news comes out that your opponent was implicated in similar dodgy dealings. In a local election in India, you'll be seeing around 7-8 different parties and 4-5 additional independent candidates running for a seat. Generally, a "landslide victory" for a seat might be 30% of total votes at most. With margins so low and elections so expensive (candidates for local elections now spend around $5-$15 million [0]), this means you need to make sure to find a way to not make enemies. [0] - https://theprint.in/opinion/does-india-need-a-ceiling-on-election-expenditure-were-better-off-without-this-fiction/1821260/ https://theprint.in/opinion/does-india-need-a-ceiling-on-ele...
- littlestymaar 3y agoIt's not turmeric that kills, it's the unregulated market.
- nonethewiser 3y agoIts the lead
- littlestymaar 3y agoIt's the lead chromate pigment that gets added because it gives a competitive advantage in terms of sales, that kills. That's what you get when you let markets regulate themselves, and that's why regulation authorities exist. (Western countries used to have the same kind of problems of large-scale food tampering).
- amriksohata 3y agoSad that corporates have processed this product so much, it comes from ancient Ayurvedic scriptures as medicinal.
- richbell 3y agoThe lead isn't a normal part of processing. It's added by unscrupulous vendors and individuals to make turmeric look more potent.
- vjk800 3y agoHow likely is the turmeric I buy in the EU to contain excess amounts of lead?
- nonethewiser 3y agoStop eating spices.
- CommanderData 3y agoConsidering a lot of our spice comes from India it's highly likely.
- matkoniecz 3y agoI hope that it is being tested, I wonder how can I check it.
- pocw 3y agoI wouldn't trust any powdered turmeric. Especially in the quantities people are consuming it these days. Buy it fresh and grind it yourself. It tastes better that way anyway.
- Frivolous9421 3y agothis is why i just put fentanyl in my turmeric
- nonethewiser 3y agoThe sun, pfas, co2, micro plastics, tumeric, chocolate… am I missing anything?
- underseacables 3y agoTangentially related, a friend of my wife, tried to convince her of the benefits of natural health, specifically using certain herbs as natural remedies. One that jumped out was that "turmeric cures cancer."
- cheald 3y agoIt's a little too neat to say that "turmeric cures cancer", but laboratory evidence does indeed show that curcumin may have anti-cancer properties. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/hp/curcumin-pdq https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/hp/curcumi...
- RicoElectrico 3y agoCurcumin is often classified as PAINS (pan-assay interference compounds). Keep that in mind.
- db48x 3y agoWait until you hear about what the Chinese used to do to tea exported to Europe.
- matkoniecz 3y agoIf you have something interesting and relevant the post it! Clickbait title without article is not useful and pointless, not merely annoying.
- db48x 3y agoA quick search would turn it up, but ok. In the early 1800s a sir Francis John Davis traveled in China disguised as a Mandarin. He discovered that green teas prepared for export were adulterated with tumeric, prussian blue, and gypsum to give them a richer green color. … At each pan stood a workman stirring the tea rapidly round with his hand, having previ- ously added a small quantity of turmeric in powder, which of course gave the leaves a yellowish or orange tinge ; but they were still to be made green. For this purpose some lumps of a fine blue were produced, together with a white substance in pow- der, which, from the names given to them by the workmen, as well as their appearance, were known at once to be prussian blue and gypsum. These were triturated finely together witha small pestle, in such proportion as reduced the dark colour of the blue to a light shade; and a quantity equal to a small teaspoonful of the powder being added to the yel- lowish leaves, these were stirred as before over the fire, until the tea had taken the fine bloom colour of Hyson, with very much the same scent. … If the tea has not highly deleterious qualities, it can only be in consequence of the colouring matter existing in a small proportion to the leaf; … It is possible that the Chinese didn’t know that prussian blue is a poison. It’s also possible that they were using real tumeric! See page 421—423 of <https://ia800902.us.archive.org/18/items/chinesegeneral02davi/chinesegeneral02davi.pdf https://ia800902.us.archive.org/18/items/chinesegeneral02dav...>.
- oska 3y agoThe last three paragraphs read very strongly like propaganda to me, which makes me wonder if the subject (tumeric adulteration) was chosen as something to write about just to put pressure on Bangladesh's and India's current rulers.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI read it as exactly that - pressure to reduce the prevalence of lead in turmeric. That seems like a reasonable thing to do and place to apply pressure?
- oska 3y agoThe pressure was much more than that, they are pushing for an "openness to foreign expertise" and a "willingness by the government to work with [NGOs]". And they criticise Modi for "driving out foreign donors and dismantling any NGO he considers unfriendly to him". I don't think the problem of tumeric adulteration is something that needs 'foreign expertise' to solve. It's an undeniably serious problem but one that any country should be able to address on its own.
- dgellow 3y agoWhy the scare quotes[0]? That impacts people throughout the entire world, of course international experts should be part of working groups trying to deal with the situation. How else do you create trust? 0: fixed typo “scary quotes”, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ta_vf7xjd34cc 3y ago[flagged]
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- koolba 3y ago> To heighten their colour, the rhizomes from which the spice is extracted are routinely dusted with lead chromate, a neurotoxin. The practice helps explain why South Asia has the highest rates of lead poisoning in the world. The turmeric is not to blame here. It’s the idiots that demand bright yellow food without regard to whether it is poison, and the disgusting people who manufacture said poison to meet that demand. It’s not just turmeric either. There’s plenty of other unnecessary dyes (eg red dye 40) adulterating such foods. As a general rule, if it’s supposed to be a home cooked meal but the colors make it look like it came out of Willy Wonka’s factory, it’s not normal.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoNobody is blaming the plant. Obviously it’s the evil people adding an adulterant to a dietary product. I don’t see how you can victim blame here. People absolutely should be able to pick the best looking alternative on the shelf without fear of being fed a neurotoxin. I’d like to see the argument rendered for how it’s their fault rather than the person poisoning them. PS real turmeric looks like it came from a willy wonky factory. And you don’t deserve to be poisoned even if it didn’t.
- kukkeliskuu 3y agoThe title of the article is blaming the plant.
- richbell 3y agoIt's blaming the spice that people consume because it's widely adulterated.
- kukkeliskuu 3y agoThe point is that many people see just the headline, and from the headline they will only remember that turmeric kills people, and some of them will start avoiding turmeric due to this. In a magazine like The Economist, which is considered to be a quality magazine, one can suspect that misleading titles might not be an accident. If one is even slightly cynical about the attitude, which is not really that deeply hidden, use of turmeric reduces the need for medicine, which reduces profits, so it is contrary to the aims of the market-fundamentalist magazine.
- jakub_g 3y agoFor fellow Europeans: turmeric = curcuma.
- simongray 3y agoI don't think it's like pineapple/ananas, e.g. we call it gurkemeje in Denmark which is cognate, but not obviously so.
- keepamovin 3y agoAnother test you can do is, here: https://youtu.be/PwbOV_Q5u6c?si=EgyrXUpuqlpJsMoy https://youtu.be/PwbOV_Q5u6c?si=EgyrXUpuqlpJsMoy I imagine that some pesticides are also a concern, tho perhaps less acutely poisonous, of no less serious concern for good health to be avoided.
- selimthegrim 3y agoThey have a whole website of these tests for different adulterations.
- keepamovin 3y agoWhere is it?
- selimthegrim 3y agoI believe it’s linked elsewhere in replies to this post.
- keepamovin 3y agoOK! Hahaha :)
- rgrieselhuber 3y agoYou can grow your own turmeric.
- lisper 3y agoThis is an incredibly misleading click-baity headline. It's not turmeric that's killing people. Unscrupulous Indian manufacturers are adding lead to turmeric as a coloring agent, and that is what is killing people.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lisper 3y agoNote to downvoters: at the time I wrote the above comment the headline did not contain the word "adulterated", and the original headline still doesn't. It just says "How to stop turmeric from killing people."
- skybrian 3y agoHere's a much more detailed article about how the researchers were able to get traders in Bangladesh to stop using lead chromate: https://undark.org/2023/07/19/the-vice-of-spice-confronting-lead-tainted-turmeric/ https://undark.org/2023/07/19/the-vice-of-spice-confronting-...
- neonate 3y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20231104090102/https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/02/how-to-stop-turmeric-from-killing-people http://web.archive.org/web/20231104090102/https://www.econom... https://archive.ph/p6FGg https://archive.ph/p6FGg
- altgeek 3y agoThis article might be paywalled, but contamination and adulterants are covered, as well as independent lab analysis of some of the products on the market. https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/turmeric-curcumin-supplements-spice-review/turmeric https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/turmeric-curcumin-supple...
- graphe 3y agoThe lead chromate isn't particularly dangerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_chromate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_chromate >Despite containing both lead and hexavalent chromium, lead chromate is not particularly toxic because of its very low solubility. The LD50 for rats is only 5,000 mg/kg. Lead chromate is treated with great care in its manufacture, the main concerns being dust of the chromate precursor. "Extensive epidemiological investigations have given no indication that the practically insoluble lead chromate pigments have any carcinogenic properties". The tumeric used in medicine are not pristine examples of 100% tumeric.
- dcgudeman 3y agoAh so maybe it's ok to dust crops with lead chromate then. That yellow color really does "pop".
- graphe 3y agoYes.
- morsch 3y agoWell, the reference to its (purported) carcinogenity was edited away twelve days ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1181373872 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/118137387...
- graphe 3y agoI looked at the source and it's OSHA. You'd do a blood test for lead, but it was due to it being inhaled and causing lung cancer. https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/federalregister/2006-02-28-0 https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/federalregister/2006-02-28-0 Ingestion wasn't mentioned, it's main danger is spray paint.
- newaccount74 3y agoOn a related note, I wonder how much lead leaks out of the brass parts of espresso machines?
- mcpackieh 3y agoIt's not just turmeric intended for human consumption that is being adulterated with poison. The pigment sindoor is traditionally made using turmeric, but frequently includes red lead and vermilion (mercury.)
- nate_meurer 3y agoI use a lot of turmeric, and I buy it whole from an Asian grocery store. Large Asian grocers will always have whole turmeric root. It's just like any other ginger root. I chop it up and puree it in a blender, and the puree can be used anywhere you'd otherwise use the powder.