bad news bears a ton of spices are full of lead (consumer reports has some info but it’s partially paywalled) so is that 1984 Garfield mug and most fiber sources and anything brightly colored from before 1978 (4 yrs after women were allowed to get credit cards in their name) and many water bottles with a vacuum sealed interior due to leaded solder or some shit
if the source is from the plants uptaking heavy metals in soil and from pesticide pollution, shouldn't this be an issue for virtually any type of food, rather than just spices?
I assumed the contamination took place during processing, not growing. I could be wrong.
Could be that the places spices are grown have more contamination than other foods
I suspect it is select plants grown in lead-contaminated soil (not sure why entire ranges are contaminated, maybe most major growing regions are contaminated for certain plants?). Idk how they’d work lead into the chopping/drying process (but I do believe they could if it saved $0.0043/kilogram)
My guess is leftover fallout from leaded gasoline
Guessing it's the same way some veggies are rich in calcium or whatever, they are more prone to uptake certain elements.
Ginger seems to uptake lead, too.