Lead Toxicity from Ayurvedic Medicines | Hacker News Reader

Lead Toxicity from Ayurvedic Medicines

cmaj.ca

58 pointsgeox30 comments

  > Of these, 11 pills contained lead levels greater than the detection limit
  > and 1 pill contained 129,000 μg/g of lead (about 13% lead by weight),
  > strongly suggesting that the pills were the source of the lead toxicity.

13% of the pill by weight, yikes!

  > Four additional pills contained 7,900—33,000 μg/g of mercury.

> and 1 pill contained 129,000 μg/g of lead (about 13% lead by weight)

Holy shit, that's like eating a lead air rifle pellet. Probably worse in fact, because it'll dissolve more

Nod, I'm pretty sure if you just swallowed an intact lead pellet you'd poop out a lead pellet.

Hazy recollections ahead. Lead, arsenic and mercury are explicit ingredients in ashes (bhasmam) form. Their claimed material properties are they are non toxic and reach the sick tissues faster than anything else. Concerns about heavy metal poisoning are raised in India when the west reports them about exported medicines. The modern medicine body IMA also complains. But even recently we got an arsenic based homeo medicine for covid.

I disagree adulterated turmeric being the lead source.

This is horrifying. What exactly in the manufacturing process could cause such egregious contamination?

Presumably it's upstream in the supply chain. See other comments about Turmeric adulterated w/lead to enhance its color (more $$).

(For the situation here, "Ayurvedic Medicines" can be read as "Herbal Supplements, Traditional Indian". The article notes that hazardous arsenic and mercury levels also seem to be common in Ayurvedic supplements purchased in the U.S. and Canada.)

Turmeric is used in Ayurveda to balance all three doshas ...

"Turmeric’s unexpected link to lead poisoning in Bangladesh (stanford.edu)"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693

This was the first thing I thought of while reading the article.

There’s high less content in a number of “regular” supplements , too. Without third party testing it’s legal to sell anything in a capsule and call it a supplement, at least in the usa

It is actually not legal to sell anything in a capsule and call it a supplement in the USA. The FDA's guidance still applies.

There are lots and lots of unscrupulous online supplement merchants who are breaking the law.

FWIW, here's another case of toxic supplements in America. With neither heavy metals nor "Ayurvedic" involved:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7237a3.htm

Thanks for sharing this. A few family members consume a good amount of alternative medicine without any idea of what they consume as the products are not regulated, or they source products from places that make no claims that are for human consumption.

Just want to add my personal experience

I take Curcumin and Chyavanprash regularly in India and also do get my blood tested for toxic metals as it’s quite cheap here to do so and I have never found lead or any other toxic element in my blood.

However when a German friend who doesn’t take these but other supplements in Germany (Siberian Ginseng amongst others) did the same test, she had higher levels of Lead in her blood (which could also be from water in Berlin)

I loved backpacking around India and Nepal when a bit younger, spent 6 months there. Life-changing experience. But I was so careless, ate at cheapest dhabas with locals, just disinfected hands with now-ubiquitous gel sanitizers. Even brought back some ayurvedic shampoos and other products.

I would love to show this experience to my kids when they will be a bit older, but its hard to ignore overall safety threats (ie food, mosquito-borne diseases, public transport, floods and overall climate change issues during monsoon, as Lybia showed recently it seems like a distant problem till its not, if infrastructure is not consistently high quality). No point going there and be there in western bubble of luxury or just sip mojitos in Goa.

As someone who takes supposedly very high quality suppliments is there a easy, relatively cheap, way to DIY test these and myself?

Not really. Your best bet is to buy them from a vendor who does batch testing (as opposed to lot testing) and will present you with a lab’s certificate of analysis when requested.

Ok so it doesn’t mention what she was taking. It could be turmeric, ashwghanda or something else. Said 4

They can't even keep the rubbish free of poisonous things...

This is unfortunately one of the ways that alternative medicine can be smeared into disrepute by the medical and pharmaceutical establishment. Unregulated and forced into the shadows, manufacturers lack accountability, and contaminants get into the supply chain.

Of course it only takes one incident from one manufacturer to tar the whole line with the same brush. In this case study, there is one woman who was a patient at one clinic. They don't say how many suppliers or manufacturers were responsible for contamination. In the past, one bad batch of a supplement has been cause for the FDA to create a panic, and take regulatory action to ban anything they want.

> Unregulated and forced into the shadows, manufacturers lack accountability, and contaminants get into the supply chain.

I mean, "unregulated" is the whole point of alternative medicine, isn't it? If you take an extract from some plant, do a double blind stuy and prove it cures something, then sell it following government safety regulation, that's just called "medicine".

> prove it cures something

Nobody is allowed to do that.

completely agree with this and your previous comment

Do you know what people call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? Medicine.

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