How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people | Hacker News Reader

How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

economist.com

270 pointsericdanielski185 comments

http://web.archive.org/web/20231104090102/https://www.econom...

> 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.

This is a common practice. There are deception at every level. See my comments from before - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=JaDogg

It is reminiscent of the Austrian antifreeze 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.

> 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.

On a related and lighter hearted note, back in the beginning of the 20th century the government of Hungary once mandated adding the pH indicator phenylphthalein to locally produced wine as a way to mark its origin for tax purposes. The compound is tasteless and clear at the acidic pH of wines, but would turn bright pink with some alkali added.

Sounds ideal right? However soon people started to complain that the wine gave them explosive diarrhea. Turns out that phenylphthalein is actually a potent laxative, just that nobody knew because it had never been given to such a large number of people in high doses. The wine were quickly withdrawn from the market and phenylphthalein remained a popular constipation medicine well into the 1980s before it was replaced by safer alternatives.

I was at an all-boys boarding school in the 70s when a bottle of phenylphthalein went missing. They shut the whole school down until it reappeared (it was left on the windowsill of a teacher's house IIRC). No idea what the culprit was intending to do with it. Put it in the tea urn and try to make the whole school shit itself to death?

Interesting, when I was in school the preferred way to shut the school down was to call in a bomb threat from a pay phone

Remember that this was a boarding school. We didn't get to go home, so there was no benefit to getting everything shut down. Also they were quite into using peer pressure via collective punishment.

That's stupid and infantile and would get everyone offside. However there was one incident of notoriety that occurred about a year after I left school (so I take no credit for it nor would I've bothered) but the details weren't spared on me by someone who was still there.

We had a Kipp's generator (aka apparatus), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kipp%27s_apparatus, in the school chemistry lab (it was a well equipped school with separate physics chemistry and biology labs). Anyway, the Kipp's generator was mainly used for making H2S and was used in a properly equipped fume cupboard with a decent exhaust.

During the last day of term (muck-up day for final year students) some bright sparks decided to remove the generator from the lab and stick it in the airconditioning ducts with the view of stinking the whole school out.

Trouble was the science wasn't well thought out, they'd not calculated how much H2S would be required to produce an objectionable effect. From what I gather the odor was so minimal that the perpetrators who were looking for the odor could barely detect it.

BTW, everyone at school was taught [as part of the curriculum] the dangers of H2S and that after a certain threshold concentration it anesthetizes the nose so one thinks the concentration has fallen and that is why it's so dangerous.

Vanishing fake blood?

I'm way more curious about the reason for the harsh reaction from the school.

"...a bottle of phenylphthalein went missing"

Uh? What was the big deal? We had bottles of phenylphthalein in the school lab and no one cared a damn about it or whether any went missing because it was so commonly available and so cheap. And most of us had phenylphthalein at home in our medicine chests in name of Ford Pills. When TV ads told us to take it to 'keep fit and regular' it was just something one was used to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBPWt4OQ-RY

BTW, when I wanted an indicator at home for my chemistry set (in the days when they made 'real' sets with chemicals that actually did things) I just went to the medicine chest got the Ford Pills out and crushed them (they were a brownish color inside) but the additives usually weren't a problem, the indicator still worked fine.

>What was the big deal?

I wasn't party to the decision making. But imagine the staff were a bit twitchy about what a malicious teenager could do with a whole bottle of the stuff. And what else they might do if they got away stealing the phenylphthalein.

When in the 70s?

I ask as there was a sudden shift in perception about the dangers of chemicals by the public sometime in the 1970s when worries were heightened (at least so in Australia where I was at the time but I think it occurred in many places). Perhaps it was this heightened concern that was responsible for the unnecessary worry over the stolen phenolphthalein.

What I've observed since my schooling in the 1960s is that worry about chemicals has definitely increased amongst the GP but unfortunately it has never been matched by a better understanding of chemistry. We often see this manifest in say overblown responses to incidents such as a spill of a relatively innocuous chemical, here both fear and perceived threat are not in keeping with actual reality. When all threats appear similar there's always the risk of not responding adequately to a situation that is actually very dangerous.

I'm glad my schooling was just before this change in thinking occurred because I had the chance to come in contact with materials that most school kids never see these days such as mercury, benzene, metallic potassium, sodium, lithium, white phosphorus, various —CN compounds, and we not only learned the equation for the black powder reaction but also we had to make the stuff and those who couldn't get it to explode failed the prac experiment. Also we had radioactive sources including metallic uranium of which discs were handed around the class to demonstrate its high density.

By today's standards that sounds like a dangerous free-for-all but it definitely was not. We were carefully and thoroughly instructed in the handling of chemicals including safety, storage, toxicity and having to recognize that certain types of chemicals were likely to be more toxic than others (even if we'd never encountered them previously then we should be especially wary of them due to the inherent characteristics of such compounds). Also much attention was paid to purity and why source was important (for instance, was the chemical lab or pharmaceutical grade).

On that last point we did an experiment where we even tasted certain reagents which I've not time to recount in detail here but it was the most important safety lesson about chemicals I was ever taught. Unfortunately, such is the fear of chemicals now that these days such experiments can never be done by school kids.

How is all this relevant to this story? It's simple really, even though I'd never learned about the toxic nature of lead chromate at school the training I had then would have made me acutely aware of its potential dangers even if I didn't know them specifically. Just the mention of lead chromate and food in the same sentence would have waved red flags even when I was a school kid! That it doesn't among some people nowadays is a real worry.

When it comes to toxicity some safety rules are dead simple—an organic compound containing a heavy metal is almost always toxic (and often very toxic). For instance, even if one had never come across them previously one could be almost certain that, say, lead acetate and methyl mercury would be toxic and you'd never want to encounter even small amounts in food. Also, much emphasis was placed on good lab practice and treating all chemicals as potentially dangerous especially those that were unknown or unlabeled.

I get really annoyed at stories like this turmeric-lead chromate one because whilst the world has become more aware of unwanted chemicals in our food and in the environment—which is a good thing—but, as mentioned, there hasn't been a corresponding improvement in understanding of the underlying chemistry by many of the public. This ignorance manifests as an overly strong fear of chemicals or just plain ignorance as in this turmeric story—or both. That all too many people are now frightened at the mere mention of the word 'chemical' is not helpful, it's very counterproductive and potentially dangerous.

That stories like this can still emerge in the 21st Century is worrying (same with your story about worries over stolen phenolphthalein) through the lack of basic chemistry knowledge is very disconcerting.

It seems to me that our approach to teaching chemistry to the GP is wrong in that we've been teaching it from the perspective that those taught will become chemists whereas it ought to be taught to provide a better general understanding of why the use of chemicals is essential in the modern world and that knowing how to both handle them safely and use them properly is of paramount importance.

An incident that happened to me some years back clearly illustrates what can happen when the heightened fear of chemicals amongst the GP combines with a profound lack of knowledge. During a meeting that I did not arrange and which I was not a central player about the banning of PVC wiring in houses an environmentalist said to me that "we [environments] will eventually get Element 17 banned altogether from everything."

Whenever I recount this odd encounter I substitute element's common/scientific name to Element 17 to highlight the sheer absurdity of such a notion, especially this element. Unfortunately, amongst some people zealotry and ignorance have combined to produce such utterances, but the trouble is that whilst this was an extreme case it nevertheless doesn't go unnoticed and ends up having a negative impact on the general discourse.

I was taught that chemistry is essential for the modern world to the function and not to be frightened of chemicals but rather to be mightily respectful of them and that to handle them properly requires some basic knowledge about chemistry.

We ought to be worried when more than a tiny minority can somehow deny the world—even food—is made of elements and chemicals and that all human-made chemicals are 'unnatural'. It's a sure indication that something isn't fully right with our education systems.

>When in the 70s?

Lates 70s. Maybe 78 or 79.

The school wasn't overly obsessive about safety. They still us to regularly throw sodium into water to show what happened and that sort of thing. However it was a military school and the discipline was fierce. So perhaps they were more concerned about the theft than what was actually stolen.

I also despair about the public's general lack of education on scientific topics, to the point now where the word 'chemicals' is a synonym for unnatural or bad. Everything is made of chemicals and it always has been!

I remember doing titrations with that stuff in an organic chemistry course.

It's phenOlphthalein!

Or the carbon monoxide thing in the US (artificial colorant for supermarket meat):

https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2013... (pdf)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23958645

The common thread is that consumers buy whatever they think "looks fresh", so vendors optimize for that metric. (It's the wrong metric). Efficient markets, I suppose.

>Efficient markets, I suppose. //

Isn't the Capitalist notion of efficiency bound with perfect information - we'd have to legislate to make sure that consumers know the product is 'laced with poison for the appearance of freshness; packaging contains carbon monoxide (CO) a deadly gas' and then see if the customers buy more of that product.

You're accusing consumers of optimising towards products _looking_ fresh, but the market isn't providing the information needed to also move away from 'purposefully laced with poison'.

I have an idea for a sort of reverse-trademark, an Origin Mark that allows a consumer to view all the inputs into a product and their geographic and legal origins. Then you can see 'this meat maker buys carbon monoxide', at least.

No comment on economic theory, but on the carbon monoxide thing, the issue here isn't its toxicity, but that vendors use it to mask the color appearance of non-fresh, unhygienic meat. Naive visual assessment is wrong.

I thought meat was more tasty/tender when it's "aged" for a while anyways.

It has to be aged correctly to be safe.

The point is that perfect information isn't real. Perfect information is the spherical cow in a vacuum of economics.

The incentives are such that vendors that lie and cheat do better than the ones that don't.

Not really comparable. The glycol is only ~4 times as damaging as the alcohol that wine contains anyway, and there were no known health issues triggered by it.

don't you think by saying "there were no known health issues triggered by it" you are committing a statistical fallacy? Just because something has not bee observed does not mean it is not there....

> That was only a few wineries though (…)

The article you linked shows it was more than that and that the country’s industry was affected.

Because of the practice of blending wines into other wines. So a few criminal wineries impacted orders of magnitude more blended wine production.

The distinction I was trying to draw was that unless there is a similar practice of blending for tumeric, this a systemic, widespread issue where the practice of poisoning customers has become normalized in the industry.

Do you have a source? I.e. on the number of criminal wineries and that the rest of the Austrian industry was unaware?

That's insane:

> Simple sweetening (also illegal) would not necessarily do the job since it would not sufficiently correct the taste profile of the wine. By using diethylene glycol (DEG), it was possible to affect both the impression of sweetness and the body of the wine. German wine chemists have stated that it is unlikely that an individual winemaker of a small winery had sufficient chemical knowledge to devise the scheme, implying that the recipe must have been drawn up by a knowledgeable wine chemist consulting for a large-scale producer.

> Most of the recalled wines contained up to a few grams of DEG per litre (and many only a fraction of a gram), which meant that dozens of bottles would have to be consumed in a limited period to reach the lethal dose of approximately 40 grams. However, in one record-setting wine (a 1981 Welschriesling Beerenauslese from Burgenland), 48 grams per litre was detected, which meant that the consumption of a single bottle could have been lethal. Also, long-term consumption of DEG is known to damage the kidney, liver, and brain.

> The industry's practice of DEG adulteration was traced back to Otto Nadrasky, a 58-year-old chemist and wine consultant from Grafenwörth, Lower Austria.

It boggles my brain that a professional chemist could recommend winemakers incorporate an actual poison into their wine. And it's not like this was some unknown substance -- it's literally the harmful chemical that was the impetus to found the FDA back in 1938! In a way, it's the poster child for a harmful adulterant [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylene_glycol#1937_%E2%8...

And poisons added to henna for Westerners because they think normal brown henna tattoos are less genuine.

Didn't realize that Simpsons episode was based on a real incident (though they depicted it in France, not Austria).

I lived in Austria for a while and have been aware of that story for a long while but it still perplexes me because I can't figure out why these idiots chose to use diethylene glycol, it was not only an irresponsible and dangerous choice but also it seems such a such a stupid one.

Di and ethylene glycol are both toxic and sweet which makes them risky chemicals to handle and store and that's been known since they were first used.

These greedy idiots should have known that. After all, they knew the chemicals were sweet and whenever the properties of di/ethylene glycol are mentioned the terms sweetness and danger/poisonous are bundled together so why didn't they know they'd likely kill their customers? (Fortunately, these days, the extremely bitter denaturant denatonium (Bitrex) is added to them stop consumption.)

Moreover, why didn't they use its closely related mate propylene glycol which is both sweet and non toxic and used in the food industry, it even has its own E number (E1521)?

The only reason I can come with is that propylene glycol isn't as sweet as its ethylene cousins. That said, it does provide that 'bulky' consistency or body that one finds in very sweet wines. BTW, PEG as it's known, is often painted onto cakes and pastries to give them that shine after baking.

> Is this mainly due to greed and corruption?

Greed, since consumers are fooled into believing they're buying a fresher, more yellow product.

The Indian government has a webpage dedicated to detecting adulteration in various kinds of food, including turmeric[1].

[1] https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/

This talks about detecting it in whole turmeric, any way of doing so for powdered turmeric?

It's right there :)

`Test 15 : Detection of artificial colour in turmeric powder`

- [1] https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/

So you have to read between the lines and infer that "artificial colour" might be lead? Seems needlessly vague.

Some of those additives are _wild_

It (lead acetate) was added to hair coloring products as late as 2022, while not meant for ingestion the risk is there (I don't know if it can get absorbed). It's still in many eyeliners and used to be present in lipstick in notable quantities. Not things you'd want it in.

Where is this and what was the impetus for banning it?

I am too used to being in the EU, and counting on RoHS and adjacent laws. So I don't really think about it most of the time, beyond reading labels.

> I suppose it’s similar to the problem of people dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,

no it isn't

Right, it isn't. In fact, many potent greenhouse gasses such as many fluorocarbons are the least toxic of all chemicals (which was one of the their main virtues and why they were used).

Their problem is not toxicity but greenhouse warming - an altogether different mechanism.

It's the result of a heterogeneous, low trust society - you don't care if you are killing someone who's not like you.

This comment is ignorant at best and racist at worst imo. Food adulteration is a common practice on ALL low income countries. India has a substantial population living with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world.

>Food adulteration is a common practice on ALL low income countries.

What's the correlation between low income countries and low trust countries?

https://ourworldindata.org/trust#:~:text=A%20Gini%20index%20....

>"A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation... As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics."

Trust is vital to maintaining healthy financial and business relationships. Contracts, loans, credit, cheques, post-paid billing, and much more all reduce friction and costs in an economy and depend on trust.

That article is interesting, but trust in institutions is probably just as important as trust in individuals and isn't really covered.

Do you have a link to a source with more info about this phenomenon?

I doubt the assertion is based in anything other than conjecture.

Francis Fukuyama wrote a book about it, called "Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity". Even though it's the same Fukuyama who declared the end of history the book has some insights into the phenomena [1].

[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1996-0...

Thanks for this link, I grabbed the ebook for my flight today.

why you gotta generalize a whole country like that? ever think of how an indian teenager might feel when they read your comment? Anyway, Adulteration is just simply ignorance and self-centered greed. People will indirectly harm anyone if it means making profits.

We have already seen this during Covid. That people will not follow safety practices like wearing masks and even rioting to remove the lockdown. Was it because the rioters lived in a heterogeneous low trust society? or did they want other races/castes to suffer?. It is just ignorance and not caring about other people if it means they themselves can lead a more convenient life.

I can also point to the current situation in Delhi https://indianexpress.com/article/india/delhi-aqi-today-seve... where they had to shutdown schools due to the severe air quality. Farmers in neighboring states burn stubble (remaining crop after harvesting) to prepare for the next crop immediately. This burning moves on to delhi and causes really really bad weather every year. burning stubble is a cheap and quick way to clear the farmland, and alternatives are expensive or unfeasible (lack of access to machinery). This is greed or poverty forcing them to do these things.

And OTOH, we have the judiciary which banned fireworks for almost 5 years now in Delhi, including the time of diwali (a festival known for fireworks) as right to quality air is now recognized as a fundamental right under right to life (and dignity). Now, we have people whining that this is stepping on the right to freedom of religion of Hindus, as the court is taking away fun crackers from Hindu children in the name of "western climate change". This is ignorance. They will literally let their own family breath the polluted air on next morning of diwali, because propaganda/politics has led them to believe that this is a coordinated attack on their religion. The people who suffer are older citizens or patients with respiratory problems.

Should facts about a country be ignored because they paint it in a less positive light and some citizens might not feel great about that?

Only 16.7%, decreasing, of people in India think “most people in my country can be trusted.” However in Norway it’s 73.7%, increasing. Should we never talk about GDP per capita discrepancies? First step in addressing these issues is acknowledging there may be a problem.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attit...

Do you really believe the GP's comment follows from that statistic you pointed out?

I think its about government regulation on food more than anything else.

No but presenting something as a result of “low trust society” is just lazy. We have plenty of examples of what’s being accused of here in the US. Monsanto poisons the country with Roundup, Big Pharma poisons the country with addictive drugs, Fracking poisons drinking water for millions, etc. But somehow that’s never a result of a “low trust society” because it’s not in a developing country.

People often forget that developed countries have already done all that before becoming what they are today (the US itself has a very long history of poisoning its population for profit, both the private sector and the government): https://www.npr.org/2019/01/20/685821214/before-black-lung-t...

The food industry was the wild west back then. I remember reading about a study in the early 1900s where one company’s canned peas was found to have no actual peas in it. And Britain still has a bread minister (its now ceremonial) whose job ot was to ensure no additives in wheat like chaulk or plaster.

Without regulations you would have to depend on your local relationships or branding to make sure your food is clean. Globalization makes it easier to ignore the needs of others due to distance.

Amazing to see primitive racism like this still pop up that can quickly be debunked by simply remembering for one second the hundreds of environmental catastrophes in the US (or Europe for that matter) done by companies for profit and zero compassion for either people or environment - many of them swept under the rug for years until areas become toxic waste dumps.

Thinking a few seconds more; what about a small group of people decimating the lives of millions of americans with opioids (Sackler), or entire industries lobbying for less regulation in foods? The EU banned additives list is way longer and they are healthier.

The problem is about profits, greed, regulation, and a bad form of capitalism where exploitation is outsourced or out of sight. Not about some "dumb people in some shithole somewhere".

One major factor is ignoring evidence based medicine. In India you can still commonly buy traditional medicines which have heavy metals like lead and mercury as ingredients.

Not ignored. EBM can be expensive or simply unavailable.

Aryuveda/Unani and Homeopathic Medicine is often the only form of "medicine" available for those in very poor areas.

Govt clinics and dispensaries might be overloaded and private healthcare is too expensive, so if you're a substinence farmer in eastern Uttar Pradesh or Bihar (let alone poorer areas across India), traditional medicines or homeopathic medicine is your only affordable choice.

Oftentimes the medicine provided is basically just steroids (they can make you feel better in the short term)

Every company has a layer of middle managers that need to meet budgets.

Basically, a layer of Eichmann's, that can be pushed into gassing people.

So adding lead to Turmeric is just one of dozens of deathly practices.

There is a great book on the subject called Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World by Dan Davies. It’s a great read and a lot of the discussion of the various factors that contribute to these types of scam behaviors and cultures and is definitely good reading, though the book is a little disjointed in how it’s written. But I recently listened to it out Audible and it was a fairly in depth discussion on the many factors that answer your exact question so I thought I’d share.

Here’s a good excerpt:

https://crimereads.com/why-just-about-every-country-seems-to...

The Canadian Paradox

Some places in the world are what they call “low-trust societies.” The political institutions are fragile and corrupt, business practices are dodgy, debts are rarely repaid, and people, rightly, fear being ripped off on any transaction. In the “high-trust societies,” conversely, businesses are honest, laws are fair and consistently enforced, and the majority of people can go about their day in the knowledge that the overall level of integrity in economic life is very high. With that in mind, given what we know about the following two countries, why is it that the Canadian financial sector is so fraud-ridden that Joe Queenan, writing in Forbes magazine in 1985, nicknamed Vancouver the “Scam Capital of the World,” while shipowners in Greece will regularly do multimillion-dollar deals on a handshake? We might call this the “Canadian Paradox.” There are different kinds of dishonesty in the world. The most profitable kind is commercial fraud, and commercial fraud is parasitical on the overall health of the business sector on which it preys. It is much more difficult to be a fraudster in a society in which people do business only with relatives or where commerce is based on family networks going back for centuries. It is much easier to carry out a securities fraud in a market where dishonesty is the rare exception rather than the everyday rule.

The existence of the Canadian Paradox suggests that there is a specifically economic dimension to a certain kind of crime of dishonesty. Trust—particularly between complete strangers, with no interactions besides relatively anonymous market transactions—is the basis of the modern industrial economy. And the story of the development of the modern economy is in large part the story of the invention and improvement of technologies and institutions for managing that trust. In other words, many things about the way the business world is organized make a lot more sense when you realize that they exist because of the constant drive for countries to become less like Greece and more like Canada.

It'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-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.

This 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.

Rather 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-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/investi... ("Investigation of Elevated Lead Levels: Applesauce Pouches (November 2023)")

> ”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!

The Consumer Reports spice article I linked looks at turmeric too and found products on shelves, in 2021, in the highest category of concern.

I'm not convinced that these (turmeric with lead chromate pigment) are rare, one-off incidents. I think this "this is a South Asian problem" might be an American problem, too, to a lesser degree: we just don't have enough visibility and testing to notice it.

Except that pretty much no plants bioaccumulate lead. The biggest lead vector for plant-based food is the soil that hitches a ride on the outside. So peeling potatoes, carrots, beets etc and washing your other fruits and veggies is really all that is needed.

It's actually a little unfortunate that no plants we know of will take up lead because this would be a way to clean up soil. Plant a lot of plant X. Pull out the plant and discard. Repeat until the lead has been pulled out of the soil.

That's going to take a while; when you discard the plant, the lead will go back into the soil. You'd need to store the leady plant somewhere.

Sunflowers and Indian mustard do bioaccumulate lead (especially with a chelating agent).

Some kinds of mushrooms take up lead And other toxic materials.

I only found this out because edible mushrooms grew in my yard, but they are warned in literature that they may contain heavy metals, as my well water contains 3ppb lead I wasn’t confident to eat them.

I also found this article for you, https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2019/03/05/mushrooms...

I grow my own turmeric and ginger with reverse osmosis filtered water indoors, perfectly lead free, and it tastes amazing when it’s fresh

Yeah this is kinda "well known" in the protein powder circles: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-hidden-da....

(essentially condensing down milk products that don't have a large % of heavy metals but this gets condensed down and the heavy metals are more likely to stay behind - 200 liters of milk to make 1kg of protein powder).

I thought XRF guns could go down to the ppb range? Why doesn't every food manufacturer test every batch?

Because nobody force them to, and they can get away with selling tainted food? Testing means testing costs plus throwing away lots that don't pass. So unless coerced they tend not to (some good companies do anyway but they are rare).

Talk to your legislators and regulatory bodies about making it happen.

I would like to know if the EU (or, in particular, Finland) is any better in this regard.

Given the FDA’s funding history over the decades since Reagan I’d hazard a guess that the number of randomized tests of imported turmeric for lead contamination per year is somewhere between zero and NaN.

A public lab in Germany found 0.13-1.22 mg/kg lead in turmeric in 2020. The legal limit for vegetables is 0.1 mg/kg, 3 mg/kg for nutritional supplements; there is (or was, in 2020) no legal limit for spices. At 1 tsp/day, they don't expect any immediate health impact from turmeric alone, but you should be exposed to as little lead as possible.

https://www.ua-bw.de/pub/beitrag.asp?subid=2&Thema_ID=2&ID=3...

India is the world’s bigger producer of turmeric and many other spices after all. Won’t be surprising that these batches originated in India and were made using adulterated rhizomes.

Do you have a link to a detailed explanation of how to perform that test? Do I just put the powder in water? What will it look like if it does or does not have lead?

How does it work?

https://eatrightindia.gov.in/dart/ Is the website by the government of India that shows relatively easy ways to test for a variety of common adulterants

Another test you can do is, here: 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.

They have a whole website of these tests for different adulterations.

Where is it?

I believe it’s linked elsewhere in replies to this post.

OK! Hahaha :)

>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.

The wording they used was 'major' culprit. They also said "The poisoning has many causes."

Leaded 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.

lead paint is the other big culprit.

For those looking to hasten the end of lead poisoning, the Lead Exposure Elimination Project (https://leadelimination.org/) does great work.

And despite being illegal, lead is still in the majority of paint tested in India

> 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.

Nobody 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.

The title of the article is blaming the plant.

It's blaming the spice that people consume because it's widely adulterated.

The 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.

> The 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.

I think until there is drastic action on behalf of India, there should be a ban on import of turmeric or products containing turmeric. Or at least as consumers we should avoid turmeric made in India.

> I don’t see how you can victim blame here.

You can blame multiple people. And nobody is saying the blame is equal. IMHO, there is a non zero amount of blame on cultures that promote “colored” food.

> It’s the idiots that demand bright yellow food without regard to whether it is poison

In nature, color very often corresponds to freshness (which corresponds to flavor). It's not that consumers are being idiots, it's that they're looking for something fresh.

The fault is 100% with manufacturers here. There is no excuse to blame consumers whatsoever.

How likely is the turmeric I buy in the EU to contain excess amounts of lead?

Stop eating spices.

Considering a lot of our spice comes from India it's highly likely.

I hope that it is being tested, I wonder how can I check it.

I 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.

Close their business, put them in jail.

In 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.

I 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.

In 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.

I am no political expert, but “my opponent is harming your children’s health” seems like it can move some votes.

And 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-ele...

Well if small businesses attack children, I attack small businesses. It doesn’t need to be complicated.

Tangentially 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."

It'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/curcumi...

Curcumin is often classified as PAINS (pan-assay interference compounds). Keep that in mind.

For fellow Europeans: turmeric = curcuma.

I don't think it's like pineapple/ananas, e.g. we call it gurkemeje in Denmark which is cognate, but not obviously so.

Here'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-...

Reminds me of the China milk scandal.

For context, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

Pretty 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.

Or the plastic rice.

Or the pigs painted black.

Or the fermented tofu that is just dyed.

Chinese saying: "if you can cheat, then cheat"

TLDR: they use deadly chemicals to give it/fake a more yellow color because people think it's better if it's more yellow.

The lead chromate isn't particularly dangerous.

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.

Ah so maybe it's ok to dust crops with lead chromate then. That yellow color really does "pop".

Yes.

Well, the reference to its (purported) carcinogenity was edited away twelve days ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/118137387...

I 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

Ingestion wasn't mentioned, it's main danger is spray paint.

The 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.

I 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?

The 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.

Why 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

It'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.)

I 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.

On a related note, I wonder how much lead leaks out of the brass parts of espresso machines?

This 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.

Note 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."

You can grow your own turmeric.

This 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-supple...

Sad that corporates have processed this product so much, it comes from ancient Ayurvedic scriptures as medicinal.

The lead isn't a normal part of processing. It's added by unscrupulous vendors and individuals to make turmeric look more potent.

Can someone archive it?

fyi you can archive it, too. Just go to archive.is, paste in the link, and hit save.

https://archive.is/p6FGg

Title is misleading: it's lead chromate (that producers mix into turmeric power) that does the killing, not turmeric.

Very 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.

> 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.

i've always felt economist is always anti-asian, particularly anti-indian.

Yes I’ve seen the same in the last several years and hence why I stopped reading them

they're also very britain can tell the US how to run the US better than the US can, since time began, and it's kind of boring.

they also pro anglo saxon style meat and potatoe eating. thats why the beef about turmeric.

They 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.

Ok, we've adulterated the title above.

https://archive.vn/vlj7u

For some reason I’ve been solving recaptchas in vain only to be asked to solve a recaptcha again.

I think it has to do with archive.is and cloudflare dns being incompatible

Then why have cloudflare running "on" it?

They 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.

I have to turn off apple private relay to avoid the recaptcha loop.

me too. can't access anything on archive.ph

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139138.

These 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.

this is why i just put fentanyl in my turmeric

It's not turmeric that kills, it's the unregulated market.

Its the lead

It'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).

The sun, pfas, co2, micro plastics, tumeric, chocolate… am I missing anything?

Wait until you hear about what the Chinese used to do to tea exported to Europe.

If you have something interesting and relevant the post it!

Clickbait title without article is not useful and pointless, not merely annoying.

A 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/chinesegeneral02dav...>.

Spices don't kill people. People kill people.

By contaminating spices on purpose apparently

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