Contaminants in tea

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teatray
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Wed Sep 14, 2022 5:32 am

I wonder what more experienced drinkers think of macroscopic contaminants in tea. I realize agricultural products aren't perfectly pure. There are acceptable limits for insect parts and what not. But, until now, I never had to deal with tea which had large foreign objects. This was my experience for years, buying tea mainly from local shops and importing from Japan. Then, even though my limited experience so far had been bad, I started importing more from China & Taiwan this year, trying many vendors. This lead to many disappointments--tea that was meh or outright bad--but also to some discoveries that I'm very happy to have made. However, I also found (what looks like) human hair on two occasions (two teas from China, one from a very expensive vendor) and a long, narrow yellow non-tea leaf rolled into a ball along with the tea leaves in a government Fushoushan (it unfolded spectacularly and spoiled the taste of the whole brew; the rest of the pack contained fine tea though). One find was from a bad shop I'd never buy again from anyway, but the other two were from what I perceive as good suppliers.

Finding the leaf was fine, I just made new tea and got some amusement out of it. The hairs disgust me & I don't feel like finishing the pack. I tried to convince myself that stuff like this can happen, that I cannot expect the same level of care as in a restaurant (where I would certainly return a soup with a hair in it, and probably not visit again). Then I realized that I am paying about the same for the tea session as for a soup in a restaurant, so maybe I should expect it to be free of such contaminants.

What are your experiences? Was I just incredibly unlucky to get 3 finds in 9 months or is it something you have to learn to live with, if you want to get these types of tea?
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LeoFox
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Wed Sep 14, 2022 6:04 am

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Teafortea
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Wed Sep 14, 2022 4:02 pm

I have found hair one time that looked like beard particle or smth else 🤮. I threw it away and washed my cup tea pot and all it touched. It was from a vendor in the states. I never ordered anymore from him and was reluctant to reuse my teapot for a while 😵💫. I drink mostly Taiwanese tea and Japanese tea lately and it has been great. The cleanest is thes du japon and ttc in my experience. I have not had any problems and I order a ton from them.
Andrew S
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Wed Sep 14, 2022 5:28 pm

Drinking old puer has given me a strong skin against contaminants.

In old puer (both loose and compressed), I have found:
- tea berries (viewtopic.php?p=35298#p35298; see also viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2358);
- bits of bamboo;
- bits of wood;
- bits of seeds, grains and kernel-type things;
- little rocks and pebbles;
- strange leaves;
- human hairs;
- some kinds of small insect wings or bits;
- a bird feather (viewtopic.php?p=40982#p40982);
- plastic strings, wires and bits;
- metal bits, including rusted metal wire.

(plus contaminants from storage, like bug remnants, innocent white mould, or the dead spiders that LeoFox linked to)

Other teas are far better in terms of strange objects than puer (especially older puer), but I have sometimes found things such as tea berries, hairs and wooden bits in other teas as well, albeit quite rarely compared to puer. Finding 3 objects in 9 months doesn't seem like ridiculously bad luck, though I may have been luckier with non-puer tea than you.

Like you say, it's an agricultural product. I think that the analogy with soup from a restaurant works better if the soup was served outside, under a tree on a windy day.

I really don't mind little contaminants like that every now and then, within reason; it reminds me that the tea was made by a person, not by an automated factory. I would not avoid a vendor merely because a single contaminant was present in a single bag of tea (it would be different if their teas were rife with strange objects, of course).

I also think that we should be more afraid of the contaminants that we can't see. I'll happily keep drinking a tea if I find a strange little object in the leaves, but I'll stop drinking it immediately if the aroma, taste or aftertaste, or the feeling, makes me think that it's been adulterated with chemicals.

Andrew
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mbanu
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Wed Sep 14, 2022 11:12 pm

Did the tea have an SC code? If it was packaged in China officially and still had hairs in it, maybe you can push back.

Sometimes unfortunately vendors will make under-the-table agreements to get Chinese tea that has not gone through any inspections for a lower price, which can lead to these sorts of problems.

In Japan this kind of under-the-table tea is very difficult to do due to cultural pressures, as it would reflect badly on many people if it was discovered, as opposed to a "Hey, that's business!" sort of mentality. In India and Sri Lanka, they have inherited and largely agree with the British cultural distaste for dirty teas, so there are a lot of supply-chain controls that keep those teas from making it to the end drinker, even if they are produced.
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debunix
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 12:25 am

Teafortea wrote:
Wed Sep 14, 2022 4:02 pm
I have found hair one time that looked like beard particle or smth else 🤮. I threw it away and washed my cup tea pot and all it touched. It was from a vendor in the states. I never ordered anymore from him and was reluctant to reuse my teapot for a while 😵💫. I drink mostly Taiwanese tea and Japanese tea lately and it has been great.
I have a lot of faith in the power of boiling water to sterilize things!
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Teafortea
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 4:18 am

debunix wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 12:25 am
Teafortea wrote:
Wed Sep 14, 2022 4:02 pm
I have found hair one time that looked like beard particle or smth else 🤮. I threw it away and washed my cup tea pot and all it touched. It was from a vendor in the states. I never ordered anymore from him and was reluctant to reuse my teapot for a while 😵💫. I drink mostly Taiwanese tea and Japanese tea lately and it has been great.
I have a lot of faith in the power of boiling water to sterilize things!
Agreed but hair is a mental block for me even if I see it burn 😂
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Bok
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 4:38 am

Teafortea wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 4:18 am
Agreed but hair is a mental block for me even if I see it burn 😂
Still got to take it out first :lol:
GaoShan
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 4:56 am

A few months ago, I found a round, pebble-like thing I think was a tea berry as I was scooping the spent leaves into the garbage, though I didn't want to fish it out of the bin to confirm. I wouldn't be happy to find human hair in my tea, but finding a cigarette butt would make me throw it out and sterilize the pot!
Ethan Kurland
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 8:34 am

debunix wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 12:25 am
I have a lot of faith in the power of boiling water to sterilize things!
I have been waiting for someone to be calm & rational. Thank you, debunix.

I have encountered rolled tea that did not open up. I did not want to know why a couple of tea pearls were hard & too tight to unfurl. I just wanted to enjoy drinking my tea which was just as the tea of 99.99% of tea sessions that did not have something odd in the leaves.
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Teafortea
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 11:48 am

Bok wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 4:38 am
Teafortea wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 4:18 am
Agreed but hair is a mental block for me even if I see it burn 😂
Still got to take it out first :lol:
Yuck yuck :lol:
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Teafortea
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 11:53 am

Ethan Kurland wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 8:34 am
debunix wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 12:25 am
I have a lot of faith in the power of boiling water to sterilize things!
I have been waiting for someone to be calm & rational. Thank you, debunix.

I have encountered rolled tea that did not open up. I did not want to know why a couple of tea pearls were hard & too tight to unfurl. I just wanted to enjoy drinking my tea which was just as the tea of 99.99% of tea sessions that did not have something odd in the leaves.
I would have dissected that poor pearl in pieces and surely ruined my tea session… curiosity has its own reasons 😉
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Baisao
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 1:22 pm

I’m not the least bit bothered by macroscopic contaminants. I remove them and press on.

I grew up on a farm and things frequently got messy. I suspect these squeamish reactions are learned behaviors from city people. It’s understandable when someone else grows your vegetables and butchers your meat for you, all delivered in shrink wrapped plastic trays. Pluck, skin, butcher, process a couple hundred animals and tell me if you’re still squeamish about a hair in your dry tea.
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Teafortea
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 2:15 pm

Nope nope! Farm girl here. Here is one of my friends hanging around my herbs. I process my own food as much as I am able too ;)

Animal hair don’t bother me, my Dalmatian sheds a ton and my kids bring chicken poo home all the time, but beard hair or smth else hair in my tea I can’t!
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TeaGrove
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 3:13 pm

I've a suspicious sandwich peeking mind so I always inspect my tea before steeping. I'm not as adventurous as teatray, so there's not been much opportunity to find anything disgusting but occasionally I find mystery leaves, wood, hay and once a tiny pebble which I just remove. It's fiddly work and human error can always be relied on so you've got to appreciate the leaves :) 🍃

@Teafortea :lol:
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