Lead pigment in turmeric is the culprit in a global poisoning mystery (2024)

No, it's definitely in the US supermarket supply chain (though it's not nearly as bad as in SEA),

https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ("[Consumer Reports] 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")

You may (or not) be surprised that there's actually no general testing for heavy metals in US foods, even in categories seriously affected by them—neither by the FDA, nor the private sector.

> "Currently, about two dozen spice companies from 11 countries are subject to import alerts for lead contamination, which signal to regulators that they can detain those products. But that represents a fraction of the herbs and spices shipped to the U.S. In addition, the limited testing the FDA has done on spices has been focused on harmful bacteria, such as salmonella, not heavy metals, Ronholm says."

> "The lack of regulation leaves much of the monitoring of heavy metal levels to companies. [Consumer Reports] contacted all the ones with products in our tests to see how they limited heavy metals."

> "Of the companies that replied to our questions—Al Wadi Al Akhdar, Costco, Bolner’s Fiesta, Gebhardt, Litehouse, McCormick, Roland Foods, Spice Islands, Target, and Whole Foods—a few said they require their suppliers to have a program for controlling or testing for heavy metals. But only three—Al Wadi Al Akhdar, Bolner’s Fiesta, and McCormick—specifically said they test products in their manufacturing plants for heavy metals."

With the exception of one brand I hadn't heard of (La Flor), every turmeric tested was either safe or in the "some concern" category.

CR does a disservice by not sharing their test levels, but I'm willing to bet my own health that "some concern" is multiple orders of magnitude less lead than what this npr article is about.

The point is that this (and similar) problems are not categorically caught at the US border.

But I wasn't suggesting it would be 'caught at the US border' so much as that if you're buying from big industrial process exporting around the world it's just so much less likely to be an issue to begin with. Article is about relatively small time farmers (processing and perhaps direct selling it themselves) trying to save their failed crop and their livelihood.

“Less likely,” sure. But way more likely than people would probably intuit.

There are plenty of very mainstream industrial brands with all sorts of contamination.

> I don't think you need to worry buying it from a store that's imported it properly

This statement is not true.

And it will only get worse, given the current political climate.