Pesticides: Are Chinese and Indian teas safe to drink?

[Bok]

Update on this in today's news in the Taipei times: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan ... 2003749232
Various tea shipments stopped to enter Taiwan from Japan, India, Vietnam and Germany due to excessive and prohibited use of pesticides...

[Maerskian]

Update on this in today's news in the Taipei times: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan ... 2003749232
Various tea shipments stopped to enter Taiwan from Japan, India, Vietnam and Germany due to excessive and prohibited use of pesticides...

Black tea imported from ... Germany... to ... Taiwan ? ; not surprised on anything else, i've seen similar cases on the food industry several years ago but still wonder about the real source of that German tea and how it was even profitable to import it from there.

That said... have seen strange things before, like Gorreana tea plantation ( Azores islands ) importing low quality black & green - rock dry - tea to make blends with their own ( their jasmine & earl grey own versions... with India imported low quality fossilized jasmine & low quality dry bergamota essence ) , tasted both... and would rather not share my opinion that should be easy to guess.

[mbanu]

Germany has a very large and advanced tea flavoring industry, and is also the center of the European herbal tea market, so for those two styles of tea it may make more sense to import from Germany rather than source within Taiwan. I'm guessing here the tea was flavored black tea?

[Bok]

Germany has a very large and advanced tea flavoring industry, and is also the center of the European herbal tea market, so for those two styles of tea it may make more sense to import from Germany rather than source within Taiwan. I'm guessing here the tea was flavored black tea?

The article did not go into more details than that. From what I see on the market, you can find a lot of German herbal teas as well as Roibush and the usual tea bag suspects that German supermarkets carry as well.

[joelbct]

This site maintains testing data on pesticide residues found in the US for conventional vs. organic foods: https://www.whatsonmyfood.org/

For a few items, there was no pesticide found on either conventional or organic (avocados, for example). And some items had similar amounts of pesticide on the organic vs conventional. However, most items, the conventional seems to have more residue than the organic.

No item I have ever checked there had pesticide levels in either the conventional or the organic that would result in exceeding the EPA's acute or chronic exposure levels.

Nonetheless, I have noticed that, in line with the lists of "dirty dozen" foods that we sometimes see in the media, it appears to be mostly fruits and berries where the conventional items have enough pesticide residue to warrant buying organic.

[Bok]

And another case of rejected import teas to Taiwan:
https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202103020018

Again Japanese teas and TWG brand(knock-off Mariages Frères) and some others...

[greengaiwan]

"A friend of mine, a tea seller, died of stomach cancer a couple years ago and it prompted me to wonder again about the safety of teas. This person would have been drinking much more tea than the average person, some of it sprayed with pesticides in regions with low/no pesticide application compliance."

Also we should keep in mind that consuming beverages and foods at high temperatures increases risk of mouth and throat cancers. So I guess you could say we are all at risk for this unless we are sure to cool our tea (and any other consumable) enough before drinking it. I'm not sure the exact temperatures but there is research supporting this. I hate burning my tongue anyway so I usually do stacked steeps into a bowl and let the bowl cool off until very warm. I found a quick link from 2019:

"The study, published on Wednesday in the International Journal of Cancer, found that people who drank more than three cups of tea at a temperature over 140 degrees increased their risk of developing squamous cell esophageal cancer by about 90 percent."
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/esophagea ... %20percent.

[Baisao]

@greengaiwan- Thanks for post this. I think most of the tea I drink is on the cooler side by the time it gets to my lips.

I use a Bluetooth heated mug sometimes for tea at work. It was a gift from my company. I have it set at 130° and that seems plenty hot to me, which surprised me the first time I used it.

[greengaiwan]

greengaiwan- Thanks for post this. I think most of the tea I drink is on the cooler side by the time it gets to my lips.

I use a Bluetooth heated mug sometimes for tea at work. It was a gift from my company. I have it set at 130° and that seems plenty hot to me, which surprised me the first time I used it.

Yeah, I have been surprised at how hot the "drinkable" temperatures are. Some people (like my mom) really enjoy a boiling hot drink. Then she sips off the edge. Your heated mug sounds really nice, I got the Mr. Coffee mug warmer a few months ago and it does a good job of keeping my tea from going cold but that is about it lol. I use it a lot though!

[belewfripp]

"The study, published on Wednesday in the International Journal of Cancer, found that people who drank more than three cups of tea at a temperature over 140 degrees increased their risk of developing squamous cell esophageal cancer by about 90 percent."
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/esophagea ... %20percent.

Thanks for posting this - as someone who had an endoscopy last year with "less than great" (but not cancerous or pre-cancerous) findings, I'm glad to know this. Generally-speaking, I do also hate consuming things that are too hot and am somewhat amazed by those who do. A couple of decades ago when I worked at a pizza place in the southern U.S., we had customers who would start eating their pizza as soon as it came out of the oven. Maybe my tongue is just weak but I don't know how you do that and not burn your mouth.

[debunix]

I drink a lot of tea, but I am cautious of my tongue, and I rarely have sessions where I am drinking it hot-hot-hot. Fine sheng puerh and Dan Cong would be the key exceptions where I sip hot tea quickly. With most teas, when I'm drinking infusions that were brewed very hot, I either wait a bit for them to cool, or I slip in a bit of cool water from a pitcher if it is a delicate tea that will not tolerate waiting, or if I am in a hurry. Very little of what I drink likely meets that threshold.

[LeoFox]

https://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=24811

Maybe we should move the hot temp discussion to a new thread. The link between hot temp and esophageal cancer is strong and verified across multiple studies.

[debunix]

agreed, this is not the right topic.

[debunix]

https://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=24811

Maybe we should move the hot temp discussion to a new thread. The link between hot temp and esophageal cancer is strong and verified across multiple studies.

Here we go

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1945

[YeeOnTeaCo]

Great discussion!

When we first opened our online store to the international market we went down the rabbit hole of getting our teas certified.

As part of the research into getting a certification, we've found AOAC International.

AOAC INTERNATIONAL brings together government, industry, and academia to establish standard methods of analysis that ensure the safety and integrity of foods and other products that impact public health around the world.

They have an official method called "2007.01" which tests the level of pesticides residues in food and this is the test most food testing labs follow.

So just for fun, we sent a couple of our teas we source from a few factories to a laboratory in HK which conducts these tests and the result was pretty interesting in a good way

Unfortunately, the cost of doing such a test on all our inventory is not very feasible. But on the upside, we now know with confidence the source of our tea is free from the 473 forms of pesticides as well as heavy metals.