Lead Risk Lurks in Spice Rack

The highly-regarded website WebMD has an article about lead risks in Indian spices and ceremonial powders. The article sounds a warning. Quite high lead levels have been found in about half of imported Indian ceremonial powders and a very significant percentage of imported Indian spices.

For example, the study showed some readily available sindoor powders contained 47%-64% lead. Sindoor powders are traditionally applied to a woman's scalp as a marriage sign.

This warning is not new. It has been sounded before, and some jurisdictions have limited Indian imports because of it. On the Indian side, traditional ayurvedic medicine practitioners have tolerated these high lead levels for centuries and have not seen many of the negative after-effects claimed by Western scientists.