After being falsely accused, Natural News releases full lab test results for Indus Organics turmeric powder

Here’s a truly hilarious piece of drama from the world of organic products. In posting a recent article about Amazon.com buying Whole Foods, I mentioned three turmeric products sold by Amazon.com that contained lead, a heavy metal that can be extremely toxic when consumed in high concentrations. This wasn’t some all-out attack on the brands mentioned, by the way; it was just a demonstration that Amazon.com doesn’t test the products it sells. As a result, Amazon ends up selling a lot of food, supplements and dietary products that contain rather concerning levels of lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and other metals or elements.

One of the brands I mentioned in the story was Indus Organics, whose turmeric powder tested at over 225 ppb lead for Lead-206 (Pb-206).

In response to the article, someone claiming to be from Indus Organics threatened to sue Natural News if we didn’t immediately remove that assertion, claiming that the product contained no lead at all. Here’s where the laughable scientifically illiteracy really comes out, by the way: Almost nothing is 100% free of all lead. Anyone who thinks their products contain “no lead” whatsoever isn’t very well informed on matters of food composition. (Then again, some other companies use labs that actually try to find no lead by relying on outdated equipment incapable of detecting lead at ppb concentrations.)

In any case, in all the years that Natural News has been conducting independent science and publishing the ICP-MS test results for various brand names, not once have we ever been proven wrong. Not once have we been successfully sued. Not once have we had to retract even a single published heavy metals concentration number, including across the 800+ products tested and listed in my top-selling science book Food Forensics.

Why is that? Because our lab — CWCLabs.com — is an ISO-accredited laboratory specializing in analytical excellence for food and environmental samples. The accreditation means we are tested by third-party independent organizations and audited with on-site inspectors. Not only do we know exactly what we are doing when it comes to heavy metals, some of the leading food organizations in the industry are now coming to us to help validate new metals analysis methods because our reputation is that we’re the most dedicated and accurate food science lab in the industry. (I just spent four months scripting our new liquid handling robot, by the way, which adds even more automation and accuracy to all our sample prep and external standards preparation processes.)

With that in mind, I’ve decided to release the full ICP-MS elemental analysis results for the Indus Organics turmeric, so you can see not just the lead it contains but also the other elements it contains such as cadmium, zinc and so on. I’m also reaching out to Indus Organics to see if they would like us to help them with their science and even possibly carry their products in our store (once they meet our strict requirements). So this isn’t some sort of “attack” on Indus.

By the way, neither the cadmium nor lead levels in their turmeric product are in the “red alert” level at all. These are nowhere near the highest numbers we’ve seen in turmeric products, for example. But for someone to say this product contains “no lead” is factually false and scientifically ignorant. (All turmeric contains lead. It’s just a question of how high the concentration is. That’s why I stock up on “clean” turmeric whenever I find a clean batch, which is becoming increasingly difficult…)

See the full lab test results for Indus Organics turmeric

View the full PDF at the following link:

http://www.naturalnews.com/files/CWC-labs-Indus-organic-turmeric-2017-05-09.pdf

Details from the analysis:

Acquisition date and time: 5/9/2017 at 5:34 PM

Internal lab sample #: R3916

Dilution of sample preparation: 122.3391

Calibration type: External calibration

Virtual Internal Standard Fit type: Linear

Lead isotopes tested: 206, 207, 208

RSD (Relative Standard Deviations) of lead isotopes tested: 1.9, 1.8, 0.6

Lead (Pb) concentrations detected (ppb): 228.707, 216.796, 222.106

Cadmium isotopes tested: 111, 114

Cadmium concentrations detected: 78.824, 76.993

Mercury isotopes tested: 200, 201, 202

Mercury concentrations detected: 0.000, 0.000, 0.000

Internal standards used for calibration: Sc, Ge, In, Te, Tb, Bi

Bismuth-209 is the closest ISTD to lead (Pb), and it showed a recovery % of 92.8% in analog detection mode with 3 reps x 0.2 seconds detection time

All analysis conducted in Helium mode.

Here’s a photo of the actual Indus Organics product we tested, purchased from Amazon.com:

Note that this product apparently has no lot number. The bar code on the front is the product bar code, not a production lot number. On the bottom of the product, there’s a sticker that describes a “use by” date, but there’s no lot number accompanying it:

Unless I’m missing something here, having no visible lot number on the product would mean Indus Organics is non-compliant with basic FDA regulations for food safety. How can a company sell products to the public with no lot number on them? How does a company issue a recall for a contamination issue if they don’t even have lot numbers? How do they even track which lot of raw materials went into which production lots? If it’s true that this product has no lot number on it, there’s no question in my mind that it violates FDA food safety regulations.

Bottom line: Natural News testing results are trusted by millions of readers for the simple reason that they’re irrefutable

The takeaway from all this is that when Natural News publishes heavy metals lab testing results, you can take those results to the bank. Nobody is more dedicated to clean food science than Natural News. No lab in the world is more accurate and passionate about clean food than my lab, CWC Labs, which is increasingly recognized worldwide for analytical accuracy. I recently co-authored a science paper published in the peer-reviewed LC/GC science journal, by the way. It’s entitled “Liquid Chromatography–Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry for Cannabinoid Profiling and Quantitation in Hemp Oil Extracts.”

If you want to know the truth about what’s really in your food, spices, supplements and dog food, then get ready for a massive release of new data this year. We’re ramping up for a huge release of more lab testing numbers for off-the-shelf products, including chocolate bars, dog food and more.

Subscribe to the Natural News email newsletter (below) to be alerted to all the breaking news as we release it.

And stay informed about heavy metals at HeavyMetals.news. If you’re interested in heavy metals testing services, see our lab website at CWClabs.com.

If you want to purchase ultra-clean foods, superfoods and nutritional supplements that are all lab verified via ICP-MS, you’ll love the Health Ranger Store.

By the way, if anybody from Indus Organics is reading this, we’d love to carry your products in our store once we conduct lab testing to make sure your products meet our strict requirements (and note that your turmeric currently does not meet our requirements, so you would need to find a cleaner source, and you would need to print lot numbers on your products). Contact us if you’d like us to help retail your products to the Natural News universe of fans and readers. We can be a very valuable partner for you because we do all the lab testing on our dime, so you pay nothing. Our goal is to help small companies produce cleaner food and health products, so let us know how we can help you achieve that.

Global LEAD pollution only appeared on our planet following the industrial revolution: It’s definitely caused by human activity

While the mainstream media and the global elites sensationalize climate change and the impending doom caused by mankind’s “carbon footprint,” there are more serious pollution threats actually impacting human health. The element we should be more concerned about is lead.

It’s ignorant to think that an intergovernmental elite should confiscate the wealth of Nations to control levels of atmospheric gases such as carbon (which is a really a miracle molecule that makes up the basis of most all living things.)

Why aren’t we instead working together to rid the world of pollutants that take a physical and mental toll on our health? Lead contamination of soil, air and water is a serious problem, and its toxic pervasiveness today has been caused by human activity since the industrial age. Human activity such as mining and smelting have brought lead forward, into the soil, water, and air.

According to the World Health Organization, there is no safe level of lead exposure; lead exposure damages the kidneys, liver, bones, and brain. Scientists once believed that lead naturally occurred in the air, caused by earthly processes such as volcanic eruptions. However, scientists from Harvard University now provide geological evidence showing a time period in Earth’s history where lead was not present in the air. Lead has slowly become a problem since the beginning of the industrial age, when human activity began bringing this heavy metal to the forefront.

The human activity and pollutant that we should be concerned about

Author of the study, Alex More, climate scientist at Harvard University, told the Guardian, “We have basically been poisoning ourselves for about 2,000 years.” To make the determination, the researchers extracted an ice column from a glacier in the Swiss Alps and analyzed 43 meters of the ice core. The column of ice they studied began to form during a time period over 2,000 years ago, between 1349 and 1353 during the Black Death era. Bubbles of gas within the ice allow the scientists to analyze the composition of the air at that time in history. Using mass spectrometry and radiocarbon dating, the researchers were able to analyze the air composition month to month, over 2,000 years ago to present.

Chris Loveluck, an archaeologist from the University of Nottingham, said that lead levels were practically non-existent before human mining and smelting activity in Europe. Due to the ice core’s precise geographic location in the middle of civilization, the researchers were able to determine that the lead contribution came from Europe. Even before the 19th century industrial revolution, lead pollution was correlated with human activity. “We have for the first time a lead reading of what it would look like without humans on this part of the planet,” he told the Guardian.

Comparing the data to other historical mining records, the researchers made a strong correlation between mining and smelting operations in Great Britain with the rise in atmospheric lead. The research paper, published in the journal GeoHealth, concluded that human mining and smelting activities are the reason why there is so much lead pollution on the European continent.

This is the kind of human activity and pollution that humans should be concerned about. Airborne lead and this heavy metal’s increasing presence in municipal water sources is direct threat to human brain function and overall health. Visit CWC labs to keep up with important lead testing results from municipal water samples across the U.S. and view the latest results in NaturalScienceJournal.org.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

CWCLabs.com

NaturalScienceJournal.org

EPIDEMIC: 38 States have reported toxic lead levels in children

A large number of children with elevated blood lead levels (EBLL) might have been left undiagnosed in the U.S., according to a study published in Pediatrics, the flagship journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). As part of the study, the researchers pooled data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The CDC data revealed that 38 states and Washington D.C. had childhood lead exposure of 10 micrograms per deciliter or higher.

According to statistics, approximately 1.2 million cases of elevated blood lead levels may have occurred during the study period. However, only 606,709 or about 50 percent were reported to the CDC. The other half consisted of missed cases and states failing to report in the previous years, the CDC stated. The report also found that the reporting rate for elevated blood lead levels in children was only 64 percent. In addition, the report showed that pediatric care providers in 23 of 39 reporting states were able to identify less than half of children with high lead exposure.

The estimated prevalence of elevated blood lead levels in children was 99.5 percent in the Northeast region, and 94.3 percent in the Midwest. In contrast, the CDC estimated that 25.3 percent of children in the South and more than 21 percent in the West had elevated blood lead levels. In line with this, the AAP has recommended that pediatric care providers assess children for elevated blood lead levels based on federal, state, and local guidelines.

“While we find no evidence of under-ascertainment in a number of states, the majority appear to successfully identify fewer than half of their children with EBLL…clinicians are frequently unaware of the guidelines, and — if they are aware — then lack of enforcement undermines any effect they may have on clinician behavior,” the researchers wrote in AAPPublications.org.

High blood lead levels adversely impact pediatric health

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), lead exposure commonly stems from various lead-based products such as gasoline, batteries, cosmetics, and the like. Lead exposure is associated with a plethora of adverse health effects, especially in children.The EPA notes that heavy exposure to lead may trigger conditions such as behavioral problems, anemia, and lower IQ in children.

A 2014 study demonstrated that lead exposure may cause behavioral issues in the said population. As part of the study, researchers examined 1,341 Chinese children aged three to five years old. The study revealed that each increase in blood lead exposure was linked to a simultaneous increase in teacher-reported behavior scores on emotional reactivity, anxiety problems, and pervasive developmental problems. This effect was more pronounced in girls, the research team found. “This association showed different patterns depending on age and sex. As such, continued monitoring of blood lead concentrations, as well as clinical assessments of mental behavior during regular pediatric visits, may be warranted,” the researchers wrote in JAMANetwork.com. The findings were published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Another study revealed that lead exposure was tied to lower IQ in children. To carry out the study, researchers examined 172 children and found that participants whose blood lead levels increased from one to 10 micrograms per deciliter suffered an IQ loss of 7.4 points. The study also showed that children whose blood lead levels increased from 10 to 30 micrograms per deciliter experienced an IQ loss of about two to three points. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In addition, a Taiwanese study showed that environmental exposure to lead may negatively impact a child’s academic performance. As part of the study, the research team examined 934 children from 32 primary schools in 11 districts of Kaohsiung City in Taiwan. The researchers found that children with high blood lead levels fared worse in language capacity and mathematical ability. The findings were published in the journal Environmental Research.

Discover more articles on toxic heavy metals at HeavyMetals.news.

Sources include: 

AAPPublications.org

CDC.gov

EPA.gov

JAMANetwork.com

ABCNews.go.com

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

Why you must DEMAND made-in-the-USA dental crowns from your dentist

When we go to the dentist to repair or replace missing or cracked teeth, we usually don’t ask questions about what they put in our mouths. Because of this, tens of thousands of Americans could have dental fixtures in their mouths that contain toxic chemicals.

These metal and ceramic inserts, bought on the cheap, are imported from China and other Asian countries. According to dental experts, these cheaper products are often made in unregulated laboratories and can contain dangerous levels of lead and other chemicals — such as beryllium and cadmium — that could harm the human nervous system.

Due to their low price and quick service, many American dentists now favor these Chinese, toxic dental fixtures without passing the savings to the client. U.S. dentists have admitted using Chinese labs that charge about one-fifth of what local labs typically charge. As reported by the Daily Mail Online, dentists can take an impression of a client’s tooth, send it by express mail to China and receive a crown within four days.

“In the end, the whole system is profiteering. Any savings made by outsourcing the work to China are never passed on to the patient,” said David Smith, a board member of the Association of Dental Laboratories.

Lead poisoning linked to Chinese dental fixtures

Given China’s notoriety for cheap, fake, and toxic food and building materials, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that their dental fixtures can’t be trusted either.

At least four known cases of lead poisoning caused by Chinese dental fixtures have been reported in the United States. When these fixtures were tested in a laboratory, data revealed that some of them contained 210 times the acceptable amount of the heavy metal.

The toxic dental practice came to light when a 73-year-old Ohio woman became sick after a U.S. dentist installed a dental crown made in China. When the crown, among other crowns from Chinese labs, were tested, lead concentrations of nearly 500 parts per million were found. This is five times more lead than the limit set for toys sold in America.

While it is easy to pull lead-tainted toys off the shelves when a problem arises, it’s nowhere near as easy if the contaminated product is a dental fixture in someone’s mouth, noted David Smith.

Once inhaled or ingested, lead can harm the body in several ways. Symptoms of lead poisoning include high blood pressure, abdominal pain, headaches, memory loss, mood disorders, infertility, miscarriages, mental decline, and joint or muscles pain.

China’s quality control leaves something to be desired

Though the import of medical devices is strictly regulated, the supply of dental components is harder to control. While they all should carry a safety mark, it is often hard to check if the manufacturer used safe materials. Unlike the loose safety standards in China, laboratories in Europe or the U.S. get routine, unannounced inspections. They must follow strict laws to make sure crowns, bridges, and dentures are safe and toxin-free.

For the sake of your health, the next time you visit your dentist, be sure to ask where that set of dentures, bridges, or crowns came from. If your dental office offers steep discounts on dental work, chances are high the fixtures are imported from China.

Know that as a customer, you have the right to inquire about where dental materials have been made. If your dentist tries to dodge the question or he doesn’t want to give you a straight answer, then find another dentist who uses safe materials from trusted U.S.-based labs.

To be sure that no questionable chemicals end up in your body, opt for a holistic dentist instead. Is this term new to you? Click here to learn more about the benefits of holistic dentistry.

Sources include:

NaturalHealth365.com

DailyMail.co.uk

NaturalNews.com