Imported spices give seven children lead poisoning

Two families who frequently cooked with spices purchased in the Republic of Georgia and India inadvertently gave their children lead poisoning, according to a new report.

When the children’s doctors found the kids had high levels of lead in their bodies, authorities inspected the children’s homes but found no obvious sources of lead. “It was a head-scratcher,” study author Dr. Alan D. Woolf of Children’s Hospital in Boston told Reuters Health.

Finally, investigators narrowed the source to foreign-purchased spices, which contained extremely high levels of lead. “It was kind of a surprise to us that kids were lead poisoned, and this was the only source,” Woolf said. “How widespread a concern this might be is anybody’s guess,” he noted.

The researcher added that spices sold in the U.S. are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and therefore should not contain any lead. Furthermore, he cautioned that the families who fell ill frequently cooked with the foreign-purchased spices, and people should not be concerned about eating foreign spices occasionally.

“We do not intend to alarm travelers who may be consuming spices in foreign restaurants when they are overseas. Such casual episodic exposures should not engender any risk,” he noted.

“However, families traveling overseas should take care when buying spices in bulk that they intend to use routinely in meals back in the United States,” Woolf added.

Most cases of lead poisoning occur when children ingest dust contaminated with lead, often from older homes with peeling paint and plaster, Woolf and his co-author note in the journal Pediatrics.

Both of the families affected by the lead poisoning were immigrants. A total of 7 children between the ages of 2 and 17 were found to have lead poisoning, along with both parents of the family from India.

The other family, from the Republic of Georgia, had eaten many meals with highly contaminated swanuri marili and kharchos suneli (zafron) spices, while the Indian family had eaten many meals with kozhambu purchased from India, also contaminated with lead.

Woolf explained that children under the age of 2 are most sensitive to the effects of lead, but the heavy metal can be dangerous for pregnant women, along with teenagers and adults, as well. Too much lead in adults can cause kidney problems, high blood pressure, bone difficulties, and long-term effects on the brain, he said.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, August 2005.

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