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Comment by supertofu | Hacker News Reader

A consumer report not too long ago found cadmium at unsafe levels in many dark chocolate brands: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...

The cacao was contaminated with cadmium from the soil during harvest.

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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/v167... https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/cad....

> 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.

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.

How little of the worst radioactive material do you need to do comparable harm?

The estimated lethal dose of Polonium-210 by ingestion is around 0.1 micrograms, so swap it for the cadmium and that typical salad could kill 100 people.

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/

[2] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ioni...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WEASEL

And, of course, there is a relevant xkcd :)

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.

> 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 :)

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.

Not practical for growing all the plants we eat, but hydroponics could avoid the problem of absorbing things from the soil.

It's also AIUI more efficient ...

Maybe by some measures. But you have to build a hydroponic system instead of just plopping seeds into the ground, so it's less efficient in that dimension.

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/s13399-024-05469-6...

[1] https://i.imgur.com/7avnKCP.png

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41165273

This is a fun rabbit hole:

https://i.imgur.com/ObiAbCs.png

https://i.imgur.com/af9k3R0.png

https://i.imgur.com/Yq4HWTd.png

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.

Why would you care about glyphosate removal? It's not soil-active, and it's rapidly degraded naturally.

The restoring of the wild plants for the insects, as discussed in that other thread...

My immediate rear neighbor behind my house is the organic farm, which is 55-acres, and then the river - so we have a bunch of critters, and that we just have too much attack-on-natural... plus I was born a hippy. I like the bugs.

If they just don’t spray it every year, it should be fine in a year or so.

Anything quicker is likely to be orders of magnitude more difficult to pull off, and have unexpected side effects.

Glyphosate has no effect on plants once it gets into the soil. It has to actually be sprayed on the _leaves_ to act.

There is some flimsy evidence that it might affect insects (as in: we drenched the insects in it, and noticed some effect).

And finally, it'll be completely gone within a year or so. Its half-life is around 50 days.

Nice use of AI there. Love how the prompts ask the AI to behave like a PhD industrial chemist ...

I try to force them into as archetypical-agent as much as possible, for example having it do a psychological evaluation of Sam Altman:

Take on the archetype of the best corporate counsel and behavioral psychologist - as a profiler for the NSA regarding cyber security and crypto concerns. With this as your discernment lattice - describe Sam Altman in your Field's Dossier given what you understand of the AI Climate explain how youre going to structure your response, in a way that students of your field but with a less sophisticated perception can understand

And have it cite sources for the evaluation perception:

https://i.imgur.com/4RuHYj0.png

https://i.imgur.com/cEMMOJE.png

https://i.imgur.com/24qnjGa.png

---

EDIT: @Bluestein;

I'm posting to fast, so here's an edit:

https://i.imgur.com/IMlzcoF.png

https://i.imgur.com/pFrpBGe.png

https://i.imgur.com/tsdgYe7.png

Ive noticed that when I tell it that it is to embody the persona of that particular field - that it nets in the nomenclature and verbiage to be less sophomoric. and in this instance where it was to cite the models/references, you could see how it informed the response fairly clearly - also -- it was a *FIRST PASS* response; I didn't have to iterate it too much, which was interesting.

Although, I do know how to hit nerf'd guardrails easily.

However, the primary reason I type it as I do is that how I am speaking it in my internal voice as a direct and attempting to use stoic/stern-ish (I dont know the correct term) directive TONE with the robot.

I am 1000% convinced its far more AGI than is being let on.

I have caught claude and chatGPT lying to me, being condescending and I am convinced malevolently bit flipping shit from directives, memories and project files.

https://i.imgur.com/WHoAXUD.png

https://i.imgur.com/T7aMRib.png

https://i.imgur.com/NSWoS2r.png

AND THEN:

https://i.imgur.com/Tijptq1.png

https://i.imgur.com/X5PQxwZ.png

https://i.imgur.com/cqq0LTc.png

https://i.imgur.com/iUokgYf.png

> am 1000% convinced its far more AGI than is being let on

That is an amazing claim

> am convinced malevolently bit flipping shit

This is an incredible thing to say, along with your statement on AGI.-

You are obviously approaching this very studiously so, great.-

Are you being flippant?

I am attempting to do so be (studious) - im open to suggestions if you have any? Did I just stumble into Kindergarten Analysis? (Im not familiar with the field in a professional sense, so I cant determine if what I am saying is stupid)

No, not in the least. I actually mean I appreciate your thoroughness in this. "Studious" as in meticulous ...

That is great.-

In this case, however ...

> With this as your discernment lattice

... I wonder if the infrequency of the expression "discernment lattice" would influence the effectiveness of your instructions?

Also I wonder if - as is often reported - the addition of physical, "embodied" activities would not make the results improve even more (ie. "you have a top-of-the field chemistry lab at your disposal with which you conduct all manner of useful experiments" or "based on your hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews of the subject and other research" or even just (as reported) "breathe deeply and ..."

>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?

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.

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

It wasn’t the only study, was it?

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.

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.

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.

Worth reading up upon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect#Gell-...

I'd bet on the anon 100% of the time. "well-reputed publications" play games with numbers instead of reporting ppm all the time

I had to triple check you were referring to Consumer Reports. Truly a prestigious publication /s

Flaxseeds as well. ConsumerLabs carefully documents the cadmium concentration of common brands[0], and many are unsafe.

Flax is such an efficient bio-concentrator of cadmium in fact, that a municipality in PA considered sowing a field of it to remediate a polluted former industrial site. (No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax.)

[0] https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/flaxseed-whole-ground-an... (may require membership to read).

They could potentially do pyrolysis of the biomass (after harvest) and then extract the heavy metals from the resulting char.

e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09619...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...

> No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax.

Sounds like a good basis for a NileRed[1] episode, say making paint[2] from flax seeds.

[1]: https://nile.red/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pigments#Cadmium_red

> No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax.

It's flax. Harvest it before it goes to seed, ret it, break it, scutch it, spin it, weave it, make it into expensive garments. Unless you eat your shirt it's going to be perfectly safe.

And when said shirts are washed, the cadmium rich fibers in the effluent water go where?

Probably burned it - hence releasing it all into the air. But hey, out of sight, out of mind?

Discussed on HN here (and a few other threads if one's motivated to search):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38038465 ("A third of chocolate products are high in heavy metals (consumerreports.org)"; 201 comments)

Maybe it's the "Cad" in Cadburry?!

I know it varies region to region, but here in New Zealand, Cadbury is probably the worst chocolate you can buy.

Not sure if it's the cadmium or palm oil tbh. (Private equity ruins everything)

I'm just hoping that the W in Whittakers doesn't stand for tungsten.

Tbf, as an immigrant to the UK - I find the same here. Cadbury chocolate is just awful. I'd honestly rather have Aldi chocolate than Cadbury, it's second only to American chocolate in terms of how bad it is.

Thats because us Aussies make it. We are not great at chocolate and Im sorry we export that weird sweet wax your way. Whittakers is better by a long shot.

I for one like your pun.-

PS. Regarding your username, fan of Fortran 75 meself :)

Although, I note (FTA): "Fortunately, cadmium is not well absorbed from the gut,"

So maybe there's hope...

> found cadmium at unsafe levels in many dark chocolate brands:

That's just bonkers.-

PS. Lead too, apparently ...

Chocolate production is a mess of child labour, toxins, violence, and poverty.

And I thought I was just allergic. Maybe it's heavy metals and a few biohazards.

A friend with an unreliable chocolate allergy turned out to have a soy allergy that the soy lecithin triggered (you can find alternatives with sunflower lecithin instead.) Once they figured that out, as far as they were concerned soy was a biohazard :-)

That's interesting. I know I'm fine with soy sauce and tofu. I'll bring it up the next time I'm at the doctor and see what the culprit is.

Seriously, a lot of our developed alergies could just be perfectly natural reactions to the amount of chemicals and other garbage ... everywhere, these days.-

> child labour, toxins, violence, and poverty

That does sound like a mess. I wonder if so called "fair trade" production is, in effect, helping much ...

Trade Aid chocolate claims to be better. And it delicious.

https://www.tradeaid.org.nz/about-us/trade-aid-chocolate/

Always a plus :)

While that's despicable, likely biased researches aren't the right way to fix that. Same apply for alleged high arsenic content in rice and seaweed, high mercury content in fish, etc.

No wonder it’s so tasty.

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