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10% of tea products contain excessive pesticide residue
http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_ ... 1101110043

2011/01/11 22:25:47



Taipei, Jan. 11 (CNA) Two out of 20 tea products recently tested in New Taipei City contained excessive levels of pesticide residue, according to the results of a food safety check released Tuesday by the city's Public Health Bureau.

Some 10 percent of the products in traditional shops and hypermarkets were found to have excessive amounts of the residue, including pesticides such as Imidacloprid and Carbofuran, the bureau said.

The bureau found that the products contained more than twice the tolerable limits of below 3 ppm and 1 ppm for Imidacloprid and Carbofuran, respectively.

The excessive chemicals can cause fatigue, anxiety, headaches, dizziness and weakness, according to the bureau, which added that it has pulled the products off store shelves and launched investigations into the sources.

It advised consumers to use water of at least 80 degrees Celsius when brewing tea and to avoid drinking the first brew, as most pesticides used by local farmers are water soluble and will be removed in the first brew. (By Wang Hong-kuo and Maia Huang)

auhckw wrote: It advised consumers to use water of at least 80 degrees Celsius when brewing tea and to avoid drinking the first brew, as most pesticides used by local farmers are water soluble and will be removed in the first brew. (By Wang Hong-kuo and Maia Huang)

I wonder how true this is. Just because something is water soluble, doesn't mean it will dissolve in a flash rinse. The heat probably helps speed up the reaction, though.

Not to mention that many are tightly rolled so the inner leaf may not get exposed until the second brew.

I think the amount differs by kinds of teas too,

Teas made during early-spring (when bugs aren't so active), scenic area at high altitude (like Zheng Yan area of Wuyi), customers are more relived from threats of pesticide

I heard Puerh and Wuyi Yancha pose relatively safe category..TGY, because they enlarged the size of farms down to valleys..teabag?

I'd love to be able to test this on some of my own teas, just out of curiosity.

Sounds like they may be from the same farm. I wish they actually named the farm so we could know.

This could also be why the Chinese always rinse their teas.

You also have to look at sample size, this study only tested 20 teas and while its true 2 out of twenty is 10%, the actual statistics could be considerably higher or lower than the study found if a higher number of teas were sampled.

Buy quality tea from reputable dealers and enjoy.

Pesticide is on everything that we eat that bugs eat as well. Unless you grow it yourself you wont know. My bro did a biology experiment using catapilers for school but the experiment was ruined because they bought lettice at a grocery store and fed it to the catapilers. His advisor checked out the lettice and it had pestice on it so of course that killed the catapillers Thats what we eat.

Doing a flash rense could help but can you really just pour that tea down the drain? I don't even want to think about it

When working on my article on organic tea, I came across an interesting and very relevant study which I used to guide some of the discussion in that article. It's titled Leaching of Pesticides in Tea Brew. I'm not sure if that link is public access...I think it's not, but it's a fascinating read if anyone can get access.

There's a wide range of the degree and rate to which pesticides are extracted in tea infusions.

Some pesticides are essentially "non-extractable" in water, which is actually a good thing: it means that even if they are present in the tea leaf in potentially harmful quantities, unless you actually eat the leaf, you're not going to be exposed to appreciable amounts of it.

The pesticides that are more water soluble are actually more of a concern. You're probably not going to leach most of them out if you discard a single brewing of the tea: most of them diffuse relatively slowly and longer steeping times result in more extraction, just like flavor, caffeine, and other chemicals in tea.

Pesticides in tea ARE a matter of concern as these studies show. And, as I uncovered in writing the article on organic tea, the organic label does not guarantee that tea is free of pesticides. A 2009 news article, Pesticides found in organic tea, demonstrates this.

This is a real issue of concern. It's important to talk about it and it's important to test for pesticides and crack down on abuses of this system. And my honest opinion? I would prefer that we just outright stop using all synthetic pesticides. I think humankind would be better off without all that synthetic junk. We made it for thousands of years without it and we didn't have the sky-high cancer rates we face nowadays. You can say it's moving "backwards" but if that's what's required to keep our environment and food supply clean and safe, I say it's worth going "backwards" to do it.

Isn't the real solution to all of this so obvious?

Why can't an organization randomly take tea samples from different tea purveyors and test it for pesticide levels?

It is unfortunate you can't know for sure when sourcing tea from China.

So, my question is how can you determine which tea's have excessive pesticide?

AlexZorach wrote: Pesticides in tea ARE a matter of concern as these studies show. And, as I uncovered in writing the article on organic tea, the organic label does not guarantee that tea is free of pesticides. A 2009 news article, Pesticides found in organic tea, demonstrates this.

The article doesn't say if the product is a certified organic or not (only mentioning it's an organic firm, but there is no way to certify a firm as "organic"). But this is a typical case in either situation.
(1) If the product is not "certified" organic, then "organic" doesn't mean much, because "organic" needs to be defined by organization standards, otherwise anybody can define "organic" in a way most convenient to themselves. That's why we need certification agents such as USDA and EU.

(2) If the product is certified organic and detected to contain pesticide (this happened too), then it's not enough to find out what product it is and which firm carries it, it's most important to find which agent certified it. When USDA found its agent might not comply with USDA standards, USDA immediately disqualify this agent. (For example, http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2010/10/d ... ganic.html in the last paragraph.) A certification agent holds the responsibility of maintain its certification valid. That's why USDA, although imperfect, is one of the most trustworthy organic certification organizations. When a illegal case about organic product is released, the media usually just focus on the specific product or specific company, but we can't really learn much from it. We need to know who certified this product as organic, and what this agent should respond to its mistake, and then we can decide whether to trust any product certified by this agent in the future.

bambooforest wrote: Why can't an organization randomly take tea samples from different tea purveyors and test it for pesticide levels?

It costs money and the question is who pays for it.

gingkoseto wrote:who pays for it.

Not me!

gingkoseto wrote:

bambooforest wrote: Why can't an organization randomly take tea samples from different tea purveyors and test it for pesticide levels?

It costs money and the question is who pays for it.

A while back, I think Nigel from Teacraft had offered to test some teas if people sent them to him. Apparently, though, the testing process requires a fair amount of tea - he claimed he would need ~ 500g.