11 ms·

In short the article and conclusions are a total mess and made a nice attention grabbing headline with little to no substance. As someone that has built and ma

In short the article and conclusions are a total mess and made a nice attention grabbing headline with little to no substance. As someone that has built and managed clinical laboratories for human samples, I find this article from consumer reports extremely misleading. The describe results as a percentage of a theoretically acceptable level. For example, for cadmium, they are saying an acceptable level is 4.1 ug/day . Then they seem to imply that "TJ The Dark Chocolate Lover's Chocolate 85% Cacao" has 229% of the 4.1ug/day if a consumer ate a 30g piece. They never actually spell out what they mean or what the actual results they found were, or what the limit of detection of the methodology was or the error range of their tests. I guess they are saying that that chocolate has 9.3ug of cadmium in a 30g sample but it's impossible to say from what they wrote. The FDA states that the maximum daily consumption of cadmium should be limited to 0.21-0.36ug per kg of body mass. For an avg american male that would mean a threshold of 17.64-30.24ug/day. A typical salad containing 250g of romaine lettuce has 2-14ug of cadmium in it. Lettuce and cereal grains are the most common sources of cadmium in american diets. The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion individual atoms of cadmium. https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v1672933163/prod/content/dam/CRO-Images-2022/Special%20Projects/Consumer_Reports_Test_Methodology_for_Heavy_Metals_in_Chocolate_Bars_-_January_2023.pdf https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v167... https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/cadmium-food-and-foodwares#:~:text=For%20the%20IRL%20for%20cadmium,kilogram%20body%20weight%20per%20day https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/cad....

Bluestein 2y ago
> Lettuce and cereal grains are the most common sources of cadmium in american diets. Lettuce has cadmium. TIL.- > threshold of 17.64-30.24ug/day. So; it I am not mistaken; by these measurements the amount claimed to be contained in the article, for chocolate; would be within bounds ... (It's just you then could not go ahead and have a salad :)
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Plants take up things in the soil. That tends to also extend to heavy metals and the like. It would be really hard to find totally pristine land for a range of crops. Some of the contamination is naturally occurring.
  - samstave 2y ago
    It would be interesting to mix micro-beads of silica aerogels for heavy metal absorbtion. [0] It would also be interesting if it would be a good inter-mix for fallow cycles soil amendment activities... With the addition to rockdust through the cycling of fields, one can instill nutrients, while removing any heavy metal buildup. The research as to whether silica aeogels can remove all sorts of things is interesting -- would be great to see about Glyphosate Removal. In lieu of the HN post about re-invigorating for the Monarch Butterfly [1] [2] [3] [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13399-024-05469-6https:// https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13399-024-05469-6... [1] https://i.imgur.com/7avnKCP.png https://i.imgur.com/7avnKCP.png [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213343723005109 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41165273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41165273 This is a fun rabbit hole: https://i.imgur.com/ObiAbCs.png https://i.imgur.com/ObiAbCs.png https://i.imgur.com/af9k3R0.png https://i.imgur.com/af9k3R0.png https://i.imgur.com/Yq4HWTd.png https://i.imgur.com/Yq4HWTd.png
    - teruakohatu 2y ago
      The half life of glyphosate in the soil is not that long (studies disagree, probably influenced by who funded it) but you wouldn’t expect much, if any, in the soil after a year. Not sure it matters to monarchs if it’s in the soil verses on plants. I would be worried about ingesting aerogels until it was proven safe, but it’s an interesting idea.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      Why would you care about glyphosate removal? It's not soil-active, and it's rapidly degraded naturally.
Waterluvian 2y ago
> The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion individual atoms of cadmium. I get what you’re saying but I think it’s kind of funny how impossible it is for a layperson to have any clue if that number is a lot or a little.
- kergonath 2y ago
  If you don’t need to count it in moles, then it is tiny :) Though sometimes even tiny amounts can be quite a lot of trouble.
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    How little of the worst radioactive material do you need to do comparable harm?
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      You only need one damaged DNA strand to go cancerous and kill you. You’ll never trace it back to the exposure event though, so allocating blame will be impossible.
    - mananaysiempre 2y ago
      With doses of ionizing radiation, there are like two to three orders of magnitude of various things we measure where the consensus is that they are likely OK for you (things large enough to move you within that range include[1] eating lots of bananas, having chest X-rays, flying in airliners, living in the highlands or in a place with a naturally high background, and having mammograms). Then there are[2] multiple orders’ of magnitude worth of chasm that are considered[3] varying degrees of OK if you’re a particle physics experimentalist or radiochemist, nuclear reactor technician, or—worst of all—astronaut. At the high end of that, it starts to matter if you’ve received the dose all at once and in which place of your body and which kind of radiation it was. (I mean the units are supposed to take the last two points into account always, but here those correction factors can start to matter.) Finally, there are a couple of orders of magnitude where you inevitably and gruesomely die at varying speeds, and after that nobody lived long enough to report. The chasm is where you get single-percentage-point increases in multi-decade incidence of cancer and such, which is what you probably care about. (Don’t get me wrong, that can amount to a lot of dead people in the wrong circumstances, not to mention infertility.) Fortunately for humanity but unfortunately for your particular question, AFAIK we don’t have enough data to tell with any degree of certainty just how bad any particular point of that chasm is, and there’s no straightforward way to acquire that data. As far as dramatic death, though, tens of nanograms of polonium inside your body (which is an especially nasty thing to have there) will absolutely kill you dead. That's on the order of 0.1 quadrillion atoms. Of course, those atoms are exceptionally easy to detect, comparatively speaking. As another point of reference, lethal doses of nerve agents are on the order of a milligram and up. [1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ [2] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ionizing-radiation-dose-ranges-jan-2018.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ioni... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WEASEL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WEASEL
enraged_camel 2y ago
You're asking people here to put their faith in a comment by some rando (i.e. you) over a well-reputed publication that millions of people have been relying on for decades. I think most will balk at the idea, and I'm one of them. No offense.
- Gimpei 2y ago
  I’ve seen journalists get it wrong enough in my own field that I don’t trust any sensational headline anymore. The world is complicated and you need specialization to make any sense of specific domain. Journalists are mostly professional dilettantes and I don’t trust them in any halfway technical field. I’ve been burned too many times.
- ted_dunning 2y ago
  The critique was valid on its face. Measuring extremely small quantities is difficult and results should be given with error bars. The critique of the threshold was also clear. We don't need to know exactly where this person got their degree to understand this.
- topato 2y ago
  I had to triple check you were referring to Consumer Reports. Truly a prestigious publication /s
- NavinF 2y ago
  I'd bet on the anon 100% of the time. "well-reputed publications" play games with numbers instead of reporting ppm all the time
- cdman 2y ago
  Worth reading up upon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect#Gell-...
mixmastamyk 2y ago
It wasn’t the only study, was it?
gruez 2y ago
>The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion individual atoms of cadmium. In short you're saying that the CR numbers are suspicious because they're near the limits of what labs can detect? Is there some source you can provide for this?
throw156754228 2y ago
The OP's article says Cadmium is not well absorbed from the gut. So even less reason to be concerned.
Anotheroneagain 2y ago
CC Patterson in fact likely found out that the balance of lead isotopes was impossible, and the "heavy metals" were removed to hide the evidence. Food will always taste bland to foul without them, we will suffer from "lifestyle" disorders, and nature will keep dying, until they are returned.

Bluestein 2y ago

> Lettuce and cereal grains are the most common sources of cadmium in american diets. Lettuce has cadmium. TIL.- > threshold of 17.64-30.24ug/day. So; it I am not mistaken; by these measurements the amount claimed to be contained in the article, for chocolate; would be within bounds ... (It's just you then could not go ahead and have a salad :)

bobthepanda 2y ago
Plants take up things in the soil. That tends to also extend to heavy metals and the like. It would be really hard to find totally pristine land for a range of crops. Some of the contamination is naturally occurring.
- samstave 2y ago
  It would be interesting to mix micro-beads of silica aerogels for heavy metal absorbtion. [0] It would also be interesting if it would be a good inter-mix for fallow cycles soil amendment activities... With the addition to rockdust through the cycling of fields, one can instill nutrients, while removing any heavy metal buildup. The research as to whether silica aeogels can remove all sorts of things is interesting -- would be great to see about Glyphosate Removal. In lieu of the HN post about re-invigorating for the Monarch Butterfly [1] [2] [3] [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13399-024-05469-6https:// https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13399-024-05469-6... [1] https://i.imgur.com/7avnKCP.png https://i.imgur.com/7avnKCP.png [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213343723005109 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41165273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41165273 This is a fun rabbit hole: https://i.imgur.com/ObiAbCs.png https://i.imgur.com/ObiAbCs.png https://i.imgur.com/af9k3R0.png https://i.imgur.com/af9k3R0.png https://i.imgur.com/Yq4HWTd.png https://i.imgur.com/Yq4HWTd.png
  - teruakohatu 2y ago
    The half life of glyphosate in the soil is not that long (studies disagree, probably influenced by who funded it) but you wouldn’t expect much, if any, in the soil after a year. Not sure it matters to monarchs if it’s in the soil verses on plants. I would be worried about ingesting aerogels until it was proven safe, but it’s an interesting idea.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    Why would you care about glyphosate removal? It's not soil-active, and it's rapidly degraded naturally.

Waterluvian 2y ago

> The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion individual atoms of cadmium. I get what you’re saying but I think it’s kind of funny how impossible it is for a layperson to have any clue if that number is a lot or a little.

kergonath 2y ago
If you don’t need to count it in moles, then it is tiny :) Though sometimes even tiny amounts can be quite a lot of trouble.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  How little of the worst radioactive material do you need to do comparable harm?
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    You only need one damaged DNA strand to go cancerous and kill you. You’ll never trace it back to the exposure event though, so allocating blame will be impossible.
  - mananaysiempre 2y ago
    With doses of ionizing radiation, there are like two to three orders of magnitude of various things we measure where the consensus is that they are likely OK for you (things large enough to move you within that range include[1] eating lots of bananas, having chest X-rays, flying in airliners, living in the highlands or in a place with a naturally high background, and having mammograms). Then there are[2] multiple orders’ of magnitude worth of chasm that are considered[3] varying degrees of OK if you’re a particle physics experimentalist or radiochemist, nuclear reactor technician, or—worst of all—astronaut. At the high end of that, it starts to matter if you’ve received the dose all at once and in which place of your body and which kind of radiation it was. (I mean the units are supposed to take the last two points into account always, but here those correction factors can start to matter.) Finally, there are a couple of orders of magnitude where you inevitably and gruesomely die at varying speeds, and after that nobody lived long enough to report. The chasm is where you get single-percentage-point increases in multi-decade incidence of cancer and such, which is what you probably care about. (Don’t get me wrong, that can amount to a lot of dead people in the wrong circumstances, not to mention infertility.) Fortunately for humanity but unfortunately for your particular question, AFAIK we don’t have enough data to tell with any degree of certainty just how bad any particular point of that chasm is, and there’s no straightforward way to acquire that data. As far as dramatic death, though, tens of nanograms of polonium inside your body (which is an especially nasty thing to have there) will absolutely kill you dead. That's on the order of 0.1 quadrillion atoms. Of course, those atoms are exceptionally easy to detect, comparatively speaking. As another point of reference, lethal doses of nerve agents are on the order of a milligram and up. [1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ [2] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ionizing-radiation-dose-ranges-jan-2018.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ioni... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WEASEL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WEASEL

enraged_camel 2y ago

You're asking people here to put their faith in a comment by some rando (i.e. you) over a well-reputed publication that millions of people have been relying on for decades. I think most will balk at the idea, and I'm one of them. No offense.

Gimpei 2y ago
I’ve seen journalists get it wrong enough in my own field that I don’t trust any sensational headline anymore. The world is complicated and you need specialization to make any sense of specific domain. Journalists are mostly professional dilettantes and I don’t trust them in any halfway technical field. I’ve been burned too many times.
ted_dunning 2y ago
The critique was valid on its face. Measuring extremely small quantities is difficult and results should be given with error bars. The critique of the threshold was also clear. We don't need to know exactly where this person got their degree to understand this.
topato 2y ago
I had to triple check you were referring to Consumer Reports. Truly a prestigious publication /s
NavinF 2y ago
I'd bet on the anon 100% of the time. "well-reputed publications" play games with numbers instead of reporting ppm all the time
cdman 2y ago
Worth reading up upon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect#Gell-...

mixmastamyk 2y ago

It wasn’t the only study, was it?

gruez 2y ago

>The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion individual atoms of cadmium. In short you're saying that the CR numbers are suspicious because they're near the limits of what labs can detect? Is there some source you can provide for this?

throw156754228 2y ago

The OP's article says Cadmium is not well absorbed from the gut. So even less reason to be concerned.

Anotheroneagain 2y ago

CC Patterson in fact likely found out that the balance of lead isotopes was impossible, and the "heavy metals" were removed to hide the evidence. Food will always taste bland to foul without them, we will suffer from "lifestyle" disorders, and nature will keep dying, until they are returned.