Are You Drinking Toxic Tea? Here's How To Avoid Pesticides & Heavy Metals

Humans love tea. In fact, after water we drink more tea than any other beverage. How much do we love tea, you ask? Well, on any given day, over 159 million Americans drink tea. In 2016 alone, Americans drank over 84 billion servings (that’s over 3.8 billion gallons) of some type of tea. While about 86 percent of tea drinkers stick with the black variety (green is a distant second), you’ll find a ton of varieties on your grocery or health food store shelves.

Bowden says tea contains over 4,000 health-promoting compounds, including epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and L-theanine. EGCG provides1 antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-proliferative, anti-infective, and cardio-protective benefits. Tea is also the only plant that makes the amino acid L-theanine, which is known for2 calming and focusing the mind and reducing stress.

Tea itself is really healthy, but it can sometimes be contaminated with pesticides and heavy metals. Tea plants are "hyperaccumulators," meaning they are extremely proficient at extracting agents from the soil and accumulating them in their leaves.

That means you want to be aware of where your tea is grown, how manufacturers process and package it, and even what kind of tea bags they use. China is the world’s largest tea producer, with 8 million tea growers. Unfortunately, they are also the world’s largest pesticide user. Manufacturers don’t usually wash tea leaves before they’re bagged or packaged, so if the plants are doused with pesticides, they will infuse directly into your cup.

On top of pesticides, teas can also contain artificial colorings, flavorings, and genetically modified ingredients (GMOs). In one investigation, researchers at Greenpeace China found all tea samples from China tested positive for at least three kinds of pesticides, with one-third containing up to 29 different pesticides (many of them illegal). Tea plants naturally accumulate fluoride and other heavy metals including lead, aluminum, and arsenic. Because tea grows in acidic soils, an even higher uptake of these metals can accumulate. Fluoride toxicity can result5 in a variety of health problems such as joint pain, muscle weakness, osteoporosis, brittle teeth, kidney problems, and even cancer. Among its problems, aluminum can be associated6 with Alzheimer’s disease.

All that is not to make you panic but to become more aware of what kind of tea you buy. One solution is to buy the highest-quality tea. Lower-quality teas have more heavy metals because they consist of fallen, older leaves, while newer top leaves and buds that have absorbed less are reserved for higher-grade tea products. Organic tea might be cleaner but not always, since they will be free of most pesticibes but still might be contaminated with heavy metals or other chemicals. Ditto with higher-grade teas, which might be less toxic, but the specific farm they are from, how their harvested, and the country of origin matters. Teas from China and India are generally more contaminated than those from Japan (due to industrialization).