9 ms·

Bangladesh saved lives by getting lead out of turmeric spice

133 points by apsec112 3y ago

slau 3y ago
Not directly relevant, however the way that HN removes specific words from titles has become a tad obnoxious and patronising. In this specific case, the title is accurate, and HN’s title modification is wrong. I guess the removal of “how” was meant to combat titles like “how I made my code 500x faster”. HN guidelines tell us to not editorialise titles or headlines, and to be accurate. Why does HN then get to modify titles with glorified and inaccurate regexes? Edit: I understand “it’s their website”, however rules-for-thee-not-for-me creates inconsistency, and makes it harder for contributors how to behave up front. It will lead to more editorialising, and doesn’t appear in-line with the posture HN has had over the years.
- vasco 3y ago
  > Why does HN then get to modify titles with glorified and inaccurate regexes? Because it's their site? Someone doesn't like the word how, and this doesn't matter that much.
  - implements 3y ago
    Aviation site avherald.com does the same with “Air” - for example “Iran Air” becomes “Iran” and “Air Lingus” just “Lingus”. The site still refers to itself as “The Aviation Herald”, somewhat ironically.
    - smcl 3y ago
      Aer Lingus would be unchanged, unless they also added a case to handle that.
      - implements 3y ago
        Good catch! - I think I’ll have to hand back my Irish passport in shame!
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Is this any different? This article comes down to "there was lead in tumeric, the government was warned and goods were tested". I can't think of any other (effective) way a country could ban a toxic substance.
- kazinator 3y ago
  An article about "X was done", if it is in any way HN-worthy, can reasonably be expected to go into the "how". That's assumed.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    The lack of “How” strongly implies recency.
    - kazinator 3y ago
      If it's not recent, it needs a year in square brackets.
      - TylerE 3y ago
        In theory. In practice that doesn't always happen, and when it does it's often HOURS after a post goes up. Not a reliable marker.
        kazinator 3y ago
        I agree that if "How " is removed from a the title of a dated article, but "[year]" is not inserted in the same edit, that's a bug. Either fix the title completely, or don't bother.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sml156 3y ago
  What title should they have used. If you look at the URL it should be "bangladesh-tumeric-lead-poisoning-contamination-public-health" https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/20/23881981/bangladesh-tumeric-lead-poisoning-contamination-public-health https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/20/23881981/bangla... If you look at the bold text at the beginning of the article it should be "Lead poisoning kills millions annually. One country is showing the way forward." Underneath the bold text is smaller text "How Bangladesh removed lead from turmeric spice — and saved lives."
  - foota 3y ago
    The submitter can suggest a title, but hn will change the title on submission in many cases.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    > If you look at the URL it should be "bangladesh-tumeric-lead-poisoning-contamination-public-health" The URL is not the title and should not be used as such. It’s just a convenient way of accessing the article later. There are several reasons why URLs can (and often do) differ from the titles, it would be a terrible policy to base the HN story titles on them.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    Did we all forget title tags exist or something? > How Bangladesh saved lives by getting lead out of tumeric spice That's the title of the article and it's pretty close to the submission.
- defanor 3y ago
  "H0w [...]" titles would be somewhat amusing and appropriate as a hacky way to bash those in, albeit inappropriate as being rather silly and circumventing this sort of policy. The HN website editorializing titles automatically indeed seems wrong though: if those are bad or clickbaity titles, they probably could just not be upvoted much, maybe flagged, and otherwise dealt with using generic mechanisms, but attempting to automatically improve them does not seem to do much good. On a more optimistic note, at least those are predictable substitutions for now, and not any of the ML business.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    Yeah. Similarly, the HN convention of removing the number from a listicle doesn't stop them from being listicles, it just means users are more likely to click on them in the mistaken belief that they're a reasoned piece written by a subject matter expert. And the idea that the worst thing an author can do to grab your attention is stick a number in the title seems quaint in the context of the modern internet. Meanwhile, most of the actual ragebait makes it through unscathed...
  - distcs 3y ago
    > if those are bad or clickbaity titles, they probably could just not be upvoted much I am an active /new page lurker. You'd be surprised by the number of times I've seen clickbaity titles getting upvoted and making it to the front page. Sure the clickbaity titles had good content too, otherwise they wouldn't get upvoted again and again. But when there are two posts with equally good content, the one with clickbaity title gets the needed votes soon enough to get into the front page and the other one keeps languishing at /new. It's sad but that's what I see happening again and again at /new. I try to offset the unfairness by voting for the non-clickbaity interesting posts but adding one vote to a post that nobody else is voting for does not make any meaningful difference.
- indigodaddy 3y ago
  You’re free to modify the title again to combat HN’s title filter within a certain time limit from submission.
- rpigab 3y ago
  The problem arises when the "how" is linked to a past thing. It can get wierd. "How MJ has died" -> "MJ has died" "How the US nuked Japan" -> "The US nuked Japan"
- crossroadsguy 3y ago
  > Why does HN then get to modify titles with glorified and inaccurate regexes? In the same way HN doesn’t give you an option to delete your comments and accounts at all. Oh yeah, there’d something like “why not email <someone at HN>”.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    It doesn't need an option as in a button (HN doesn't seem to have developers on it), but it's required to comply with a deletion of your account under GDPR. Emailing someone is fine, after all, "do things that don't scale" is one of the known adages in this space.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - crossroadsguy 3y ago
      Fair point. That option is out there - but it is not clear. I have gone through the FAQ entry and the linked comment which talks of “shared ownership” of a thread — which, this is my guess, is implying every comment is shared. I find that troubling. I don’t think it would be too much to clearly add a sentence or few in that FAQ entry about how a person can get an account and its history erased from hn, even if its via an email (though such a button would be nice — which maybe just sends an email mentioning the hn username?) But I also acknowledge that matters of account and data deletions aren’t straightforward.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      How does GDPR apply to HN or Y combinator? They have no EU legal presence whatsoever last time I checked.
      - sebastiennight 3y ago
        But they have (a lot of) EU users, and they gather PII from those users (such as email, or in some cases username == first name or full name ; and profile description can contain PII ; they probably also get our IP) so they still must abide by GDPR. If you have EU users you can't hide behind "well *my* country says you can take PII and not charge VAT and not provide refunds, and I don't care about 3D Secure or DSP2 when I charge EU credit cards etc etc." You have to either comply with the law to get those users and customers, or withdraw from there. It seems logical that as a citizen of [insert country] I should be able to rely on my own country's protections against [insert risk] whether the third party is from my own land or not.
- threatofrain 3y ago
  What I hate about this one is that the headlines which were trendy before aren’t trendy now but we’re still left with these rules, and secondly that the modified titles can become a more dramatic title.
- fomine3 3y ago
  I argue removing "How" doesn't even reduce clickbait score much
esafak 3y ago
How did they do it, by banning the sale of tainted turmeric, right? edit: Rereading the article I also see the lead came from a colorant, lead chromate.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  > When the Food Safety Authority showed up at the market and started issuing fines for lead adulteration, it stopped being a savvy business move to add lead. Purchasers who were accustomed to unnatural lead-colored turmeric learned how to recognize non-adulterated turmeric. And so lead went from ubiquitous to nearly nonexistent in the space of just a few years.
  - twic 3y ago
    HN's libertarian crowd real quiet right now.
    - all2 3y ago
      Why do you think this is the case?
    - harry8 3y ago
      I've never met a libertarian who believed in the right to secretly adulterate product with undetectable slow acting poison customers don't know about or understand. It's on the level of "you made a choice, alone, purely for the benefit of your family, not much socialist nanny state going on now." There's plenty to discuss and even argue about across ideological lines. Unless it's straw-men all the way down when there becomes no point, which seems a shame to me. Maybe next time phrase the thing more along the lines of: "How do libertarians view such market regulation success?"
      - sofixa 3y ago
        You seem to be describing cognitive dissonance.
      - 3y ago
instagraham 3y ago
It was extraordinarily tragic how people responded to the Economist's piece about lead in turmeric here in India. While normally most of the stupidity lies on one side of the political spectrum, you could see both sides lambasting it as a hit piece by Big West against traditional healing and spices. Most people took the "everything is contaminated anyway, why single out turmeric?" route. This is the best route to take if you want lead contamination to continue. The biggest tragedy about ideological divides is how it makes people immune to truth-seeking behaviours. Lead contamination should not be political. Lead doesn't care who you vote for or on what basis you are butthurt. Kudos to our neighbours for, once again, showing us that there are better ways to do things.
- mcny 3y ago
  Here is the link to the conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 My summary, there are Two sets of bad comments: one US Americans who think all regulations are bad (shockingly common here) and Indians who think all criticism is a personal insult to them.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    > US Americans who think all regulations are bad (shockingly common here) Yeah, it's annoying and a perfect example of how intelligence, knowledge and smarts in some areas do not indicate anything about general intelligence, knowledge and smarts in life. Brilliant doctors and engineers can be completely incapable of using a screwdriver or unaware of how anything outside of their domains functions. And frustratingly, they often assume that because they're brilliant in their field, their brilliance applies elsewhere.. but it doesn't. > Indians who think all criticism is a personal insult to them I've seen this as a common trend on any India-related discussion. Does anyone have any ideas as to why?
    - SaltySolomon 3y ago
      > I've seen this as a common trend on any India-related discussion. Does anyone have any ideas as to why? My theory is the rise of Hindunationationalism, and nationalism in general in India, which leads to the feeling of needing to defend ones country against any perceived attacks. Combine this with a huge country and rising levels of English proficency and you will get that type of comments on English speaking online boards.
boxed 3y ago
Excellent example of how free markets can go quite badly without regulation. The strong color of lead tainted turmeric had stronger sales. If you sold non-poison you were likely to go out of business, being outcompeted by your competitors.
- surfpel 3y ago
  The free market absolutist response to these events is typically that market forces from consumer preference will drive down leaded turmeric sales, and “who’s to stop me from consuming lead if I want to.” The core issue I have with free market absolutist arguments is their reliance on perfect information across parties and perfectly rational actors. Those constraints make any system of governance viable, and in my view, are a defining feature of extremist ideologies.
  - PumpkinSpice 3y ago
    I see the problem a bit differently. Perhaps a society could function in a model like that. But we decided it's too burdensome and we ceded this responsibility to the government. In such a world, it is paradoxically more dangerous to come across some under-regulated niche, because our default assumption is that the government took care of the risk. It doesn't even cross your mind that you should be asking about lead in your turmeric. This is sort of what happened with welfare too. For a long time, we depended on private charities to take care of the less fortunate. We decided the system sucked, so we established a government-operated safety net. But in this reality, it can be worse if you slip through the cracks of government programs. People around you by and large no longer think it's their duty to help. Anyway, I wouldn't write it off as extremism. It's just we need to pick an option and stick to it. In a "nanny-state" world, you can't decide that you're not going to regulate food safety anymore and hope that the market will sort it out.
    - OscarCunningham 3y ago
      In particular, adding lead to tumeric was illegal before they made a show of enforcing it in 2019. So their previous policy was the worst of both worlds; telling people they were safe while allowing them to be poisoned.
jojobas 3y ago
Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/641/ https://xkcd.com/641/
CommanderData 3y ago
Is there a way to ensure Tumeric you buy is from Bangladesh and not India? What reliable at home tests would validate your spice? (Or lack thereof)
- stinos 3y ago
  Whenever I see articles like this I wonder the same. In theory it is possible to trace back where anything one buys came from, in practice not so much because almost inevitably you'll hit a company along the production/shipping chain refusing to disclose information. But yeah even if it were, a home test would still be a better source of truth. Assuming the test is correct. Lead tests are fairly common though (because of historic lead painting and water piping) and in some countries sort of regulated so that shouldn't be an issue. As for any other pollution: it might be saner in the end to not worry about it too much, there's just so many things which can go wrong.
- perihelions 3y ago
  FWIW Consumer Reports tests turmeric (and other spice) brands for heavy metals: 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")
  - swed420 3y ago
    Don't forget chocolate: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-... And applesauce: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/31/1209685022/wanabana-fruit-pouches-lead-fda https://www.npr.org/2023/10/31/1209685022/wanabana-fruit-pou...
siftrics 3y ago
"Lead poisoning kills millions annually. One country is showing the way forward." Extremely ironic and deceptive title, considering Bangladesh was also one of the only countries who's created a culture completely fine with defrauding and poisoning its own people. Not weighing cultures against one another. It's just dumb to praise a country for fixing a problem when said country is the sole creator of it. It is the bare minimum not to poison people. We don't need to be giving pats on the back for adhering to the bare minimum.
pornel 3y ago
What's shocking to me that producers were simply adding a lead colorant on purpose. I thought the challenge would be from some hard to avoid environmental pollution, or a complex chemical process going wrong. Nope, it's just lead paint.
Namari 3y ago
We're having similar problem with Nitrite salts in Ham, not as deadly though. It shows how we're willing to make things look better just to sell more and at the detriment of health.
rayiner 3y ago
Bangladesh is a good A/B example of how much poverty in the developing world is driven by ineffective government. When my family left the country in 1989, it was a poster child for third world dysfunction. At the time it was ruled by a military dictator. Through the 1990s, “democracy” proved ineffective and fragile. Then something changed. Starting in 2001, the leaders of both main parties adopted a sort of autocratic neoliberalism. They implemented IMF mandated reforms, etc. Since 2001, Bangladesh’s GDP per capita has increased by a factor of six. It’s still a breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent country. The opposition leader is currently in prison. And the son of the current Prime Minister fled the country and is living in the US. But it’s at least minimally competent. Foreign money doesn’t completely disappear when it comes into the country. Chinese and Russian funding has actually turned into real infrastructure: railroads, a nuclear power plant, etc. It’s been a remarkable change.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  When it was still Pakistan, they asked the central government for a nuclear power plant like Karachi had and I think they got like a cobalt 60 target for medical isotopes. Absolute own goal on the federation’s part.
merricksb 3y ago
Discussed 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693 (408 points/4 months ago/209 comments) And another big turmeric/lead post 9 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 (270 points/9 days ago/191 comments)

133 points by apsec112 3y ago

slau 3y ago

Not directly relevant, however the way that HN removes specific words from titles has become a tad obnoxious and patronising. In this specific case, the title is accurate, and HN’s title modification is wrong. I guess the removal of “how” was meant to combat titles like “how I made my code 500x faster”. HN guidelines tell us to not editorialise titles or headlines, and to be accurate. Why does HN then get to modify titles with glorified and inaccurate regexes? Edit: I understand “it’s their website”, however rules-for-thee-not-for-me creates inconsistency, and makes it harder for contributors how to behave up front. It will lead to more editorialising, and doesn’t appear in-line with the posture HN has had over the years.

vasco 3y ago
> Why does HN then get to modify titles with glorified and inaccurate regexes? Because it's their site? Someone doesn't like the word how, and this doesn't matter that much.
- implements 3y ago
  Aviation site avherald.com does the same with “Air” - for example “Iran Air” becomes “Iran” and “Air Lingus” just “Lingus”. The site still refers to itself as “The Aviation Herald”, somewhat ironically.
  - smcl 3y ago
    Aer Lingus would be unchanged, unless they also added a case to handle that.
    - implements 3y ago
      Good catch! - I think I’ll have to hand back my Irish passport in shame!
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
jeroenhd 3y ago
Is this any different? This article comes down to "there was lead in tumeric, the government was warned and goods were tested". I can't think of any other (effective) way a country could ban a toxic substance.
kazinator 3y ago
An article about "X was done", if it is in any way HN-worthy, can reasonably be expected to go into the "how". That's assumed.
- TylerE 3y ago
  The lack of “How” strongly implies recency.
  - kazinator 3y ago
    If it's not recent, it needs a year in square brackets.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      In theory. In practice that doesn't always happen, and when it does it's often HOURS after a post goes up. Not a reliable marker.
      - kazinator 3y ago
        I agree that if "How " is removed from a the title of a dated article, but "[year]" is not inserted in the same edit, that's a bug. Either fix the title completely, or don't bother.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sml156 3y ago
What title should they have used. If you look at the URL it should be "bangladesh-tumeric-lead-poisoning-contamination-public-health" https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/20/23881981/bangladesh-tumeric-lead-poisoning-contamination-public-health https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/20/23881981/bangla... If you look at the bold text at the beginning of the article it should be "Lead poisoning kills millions annually. One country is showing the way forward." Underneath the bold text is smaller text "How Bangladesh removed lead from turmeric spice — and saved lives."
- foota 3y ago
  The submitter can suggest a title, but hn will change the title on submission in many cases.
- kergonath 3y ago
  > If you look at the URL it should be "bangladesh-tumeric-lead-poisoning-contamination-public-health" The URL is not the title and should not be used as such. It’s just a convenient way of accessing the article later. There are several reasons why URLs can (and often do) differ from the titles, it would be a terrible policy to base the HN story titles on them.
- hnbad 3y ago
  Did we all forget title tags exist or something? > How Bangladesh saved lives by getting lead out of tumeric spice That's the title of the article and it's pretty close to the submission.
defanor 3y ago
"H0w [...]" titles would be somewhat amusing and appropriate as a hacky way to bash those in, albeit inappropriate as being rather silly and circumventing this sort of policy. The HN website editorializing titles automatically indeed seems wrong though: if those are bad or clickbaity titles, they probably could just not be upvoted much, maybe flagged, and otherwise dealt with using generic mechanisms, but attempting to automatically improve them does not seem to do much good. On a more optimistic note, at least those are predictable substitutions for now, and not any of the ML business.
- notahacker 3y ago
  Yeah. Similarly, the HN convention of removing the number from a listicle doesn't stop them from being listicles, it just means users are more likely to click on them in the mistaken belief that they're a reasoned piece written by a subject matter expert. And the idea that the worst thing an author can do to grab your attention is stick a number in the title seems quaint in the context of the modern internet. Meanwhile, most of the actual ragebait makes it through unscathed...
- distcs 3y ago
  > if those are bad or clickbaity titles, they probably could just not be upvoted much I am an active /new page lurker. You'd be surprised by the number of times I've seen clickbaity titles getting upvoted and making it to the front page. Sure the clickbaity titles had good content too, otherwise they wouldn't get upvoted again and again. But when there are two posts with equally good content, the one with clickbaity title gets the needed votes soon enough to get into the front page and the other one keeps languishing at /new. It's sad but that's what I see happening again and again at /new. I try to offset the unfairness by voting for the non-clickbaity interesting posts but adding one vote to a post that nobody else is voting for does not make any meaningful difference.
indigodaddy 3y ago
You’re free to modify the title again to combat HN’s title filter within a certain time limit from submission.
rpigab 3y ago
The problem arises when the "how" is linked to a past thing. It can get wierd. "How MJ has died" -> "MJ has died" "How the US nuked Japan" -> "The US nuked Japan"
crossroadsguy 3y ago
> Why does HN then get to modify titles with glorified and inaccurate regexes? In the same way HN doesn’t give you an option to delete your comments and accounts at all. Oh yeah, there’d something like “why not email <someone at HN>”.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  It doesn't need an option as in a button (HN doesn't seem to have developers on it), but it's required to comply with a deletion of your account under GDPR. Emailing someone is fine, after all, "do things that don't scale" is one of the known adages in this space.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - crossroadsguy 3y ago
    Fair point. That option is out there - but it is not clear. I have gone through the FAQ entry and the linked comment which talks of “shared ownership” of a thread — which, this is my guess, is implying every comment is shared. I find that troubling. I don’t think it would be too much to clearly add a sentence or few in that FAQ entry about how a person can get an account and its history erased from hn, even if its via an email (though such a button would be nice — which maybe just sends an email mentioning the hn username?) But I also acknowledge that matters of account and data deletions aren’t straightforward.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    How does GDPR apply to HN or Y combinator? They have no EU legal presence whatsoever last time I checked.
    - sebastiennight 3y ago
      But they have (a lot of) EU users, and they gather PII from those users (such as email, or in some cases username == first name or full name ; and profile description can contain PII ; they probably also get our IP) so they still must abide by GDPR. If you have EU users you can't hide behind "well *my* country says you can take PII and not charge VAT and not provide refunds, and I don't care about 3D Secure or DSP2 when I charge EU credit cards etc etc." You have to either comply with the law to get those users and customers, or withdraw from there. It seems logical that as a citizen of [insert country] I should be able to rely on my own country's protections against [insert risk] whether the third party is from my own land or not.
threatofrain 3y ago
What I hate about this one is that the headlines which were trendy before aren’t trendy now but we’re still left with these rules, and secondly that the modified titles can become a more dramatic title.
fomine3 3y ago
I argue removing "How" doesn't even reduce clickbait score much

esafak 3y ago

How did they do it, by banning the sale of tainted turmeric, right? edit: Rereading the article I also see the lead came from a colorant, lead chromate.

resolutebat 3y ago
> When the Food Safety Authority showed up at the market and started issuing fines for lead adulteration, it stopped being a savvy business move to add lead. Purchasers who were accustomed to unnatural lead-colored turmeric learned how to recognize non-adulterated turmeric. And so lead went from ubiquitous to nearly nonexistent in the space of just a few years.
- twic 3y ago
  HN's libertarian crowd real quiet right now.
  - all2 3y ago
    Why do you think this is the case?
  - harry8 3y ago
    I've never met a libertarian who believed in the right to secretly adulterate product with undetectable slow acting poison customers don't know about or understand. It's on the level of "you made a choice, alone, purely for the benefit of your family, not much socialist nanny state going on now." There's plenty to discuss and even argue about across ideological lines. Unless it's straw-men all the way down when there becomes no point, which seems a shame to me. Maybe next time phrase the thing more along the lines of: "How do libertarians view such market regulation success?"
    - sofixa 3y ago
      You seem to be describing cognitive dissonance.
    - 3y ago

instagraham 3y ago

It was extraordinarily tragic how people responded to the Economist's piece about lead in turmeric here in India. While normally most of the stupidity lies on one side of the political spectrum, you could see both sides lambasting it as a hit piece by Big West against traditional healing and spices. Most people took the "everything is contaminated anyway, why single out turmeric?" route. This is the best route to take if you want lead contamination to continue. The biggest tragedy about ideological divides is how it makes people immune to truth-seeking behaviours. Lead contamination should not be political. Lead doesn't care who you vote for or on what basis you are butthurt. Kudos to our neighbours for, once again, showing us that there are better ways to do things.

mcny 3y ago
Here is the link to the conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 My summary, there are Two sets of bad comments: one US Americans who think all regulations are bad (shockingly common here) and Indians who think all criticism is a personal insult to them.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > US Americans who think all regulations are bad (shockingly common here) Yeah, it's annoying and a perfect example of how intelligence, knowledge and smarts in some areas do not indicate anything about general intelligence, knowledge and smarts in life. Brilliant doctors and engineers can be completely incapable of using a screwdriver or unaware of how anything outside of their domains functions. And frustratingly, they often assume that because they're brilliant in their field, their brilliance applies elsewhere.. but it doesn't. > Indians who think all criticism is a personal insult to them I've seen this as a common trend on any India-related discussion. Does anyone have any ideas as to why?
  - SaltySolomon 3y ago
    > I've seen this as a common trend on any India-related discussion. Does anyone have any ideas as to why? My theory is the rise of Hindunationationalism, and nationalism in general in India, which leads to the feeling of needing to defend ones country against any perceived attacks. Combine this with a huge country and rising levels of English proficency and you will get that type of comments on English speaking online boards.

boxed 3y ago

Excellent example of how free markets can go quite badly without regulation. The strong color of lead tainted turmeric had stronger sales. If you sold non-poison you were likely to go out of business, being outcompeted by your competitors.

surfpel 3y ago
The free market absolutist response to these events is typically that market forces from consumer preference will drive down leaded turmeric sales, and “who’s to stop me from consuming lead if I want to.” The core issue I have with free market absolutist arguments is their reliance on perfect information across parties and perfectly rational actors. Those constraints make any system of governance viable, and in my view, are a defining feature of extremist ideologies.
- PumpkinSpice 3y ago
  I see the problem a bit differently. Perhaps a society could function in a model like that. But we decided it's too burdensome and we ceded this responsibility to the government. In such a world, it is paradoxically more dangerous to come across some under-regulated niche, because our default assumption is that the government took care of the risk. It doesn't even cross your mind that you should be asking about lead in your turmeric. This is sort of what happened with welfare too. For a long time, we depended on private charities to take care of the less fortunate. We decided the system sucked, so we established a government-operated safety net. But in this reality, it can be worse if you slip through the cracks of government programs. People around you by and large no longer think it's their duty to help. Anyway, I wouldn't write it off as extremism. It's just we need to pick an option and stick to it. In a "nanny-state" world, you can't decide that you're not going to regulate food safety anymore and hope that the market will sort it out.
  - OscarCunningham 3y ago
    In particular, adding lead to tumeric was illegal before they made a show of enforcing it in 2019. So their previous policy was the worst of both worlds; telling people they were safe while allowing them to be poisoned.

jojobas 3y ago

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/641/ https://xkcd.com/641/

CommanderData 3y ago

Is there a way to ensure Tumeric you buy is from Bangladesh and not India? What reliable at home tests would validate your spice? (Or lack thereof)

stinos 3y ago
Whenever I see articles like this I wonder the same. In theory it is possible to trace back where anything one buys came from, in practice not so much because almost inevitably you'll hit a company along the production/shipping chain refusing to disclose information. But yeah even if it were, a home test would still be a better source of truth. Assuming the test is correct. Lead tests are fairly common though (because of historic lead painting and water piping) and in some countries sort of regulated so that shouldn't be an issue. As for any other pollution: it might be saner in the end to not worry about it too much, there's just so many things which can go wrong.
perihelions 3y ago
FWIW Consumer Reports tests turmeric (and other spice) brands for heavy metals: 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")
- swed420 3y ago
  Don't forget chocolate: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-... And applesauce: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/31/1209685022/wanabana-fruit-pouches-lead-fda https://www.npr.org/2023/10/31/1209685022/wanabana-fruit-pou...

siftrics 3y ago

"Lead poisoning kills millions annually. One country is showing the way forward." Extremely ironic and deceptive title, considering Bangladesh was also one of the only countries who's created a culture completely fine with defrauding and poisoning its own people. Not weighing cultures against one another. It's just dumb to praise a country for fixing a problem when said country is the sole creator of it. It is the bare minimum not to poison people. We don't need to be giving pats on the back for adhering to the bare minimum.

pornel 3y ago

What's shocking to me that producers were simply adding a lead colorant on purpose. I thought the challenge would be from some hard to avoid environmental pollution, or a complex chemical process going wrong. Nope, it's just lead paint.

Namari 3y ago

We're having similar problem with Nitrite salts in Ham, not as deadly though. It shows how we're willing to make things look better just to sell more and at the detriment of health.

rayiner 3y ago

Bangladesh is a good A/B example of how much poverty in the developing world is driven by ineffective government. When my family left the country in 1989, it was a poster child for third world dysfunction. At the time it was ruled by a military dictator. Through the 1990s, “democracy” proved ineffective and fragile. Then something changed. Starting in 2001, the leaders of both main parties adopted a sort of autocratic neoliberalism. They implemented IMF mandated reforms, etc. Since 2001, Bangladesh’s GDP per capita has increased by a factor of six. It’s still a breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent country. The opposition leader is currently in prison. And the son of the current Prime Minister fled the country and is living in the US. But it’s at least minimally competent. Foreign money doesn’t completely disappear when it comes into the country. Chinese and Russian funding has actually turned into real infrastructure: railroads, a nuclear power plant, etc. It’s been a remarkable change.

selimthegrim 3y ago
When it was still Pakistan, they asked the central government for a nuclear power plant like Karachi had and I think they got like a cobalt 60 target for medical isotopes. Absolute own goal on the federation’s part.

merricksb 3y ago

Discussed 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693 (408 points/4 months ago/209 comments) And another big turmeric/lead post 9 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 (270 points/9 days ago/191 comments)