Get The Lead Out

"Get the lead out," is short for "Get the lead out of your shoes." Or in this case, "Get the lead out of your tea!"

According to the National Post, teas from China have a particularly high content of lead compared to those from India and Sri Lanka. (I wonder where Japan is on the list??)

I do not react well to Chinese green teas. I get all spacey and kind of queasy. It's a hard feeling to describe. It was only until recently that I realized it only happens with Chinese green teas, not Japanese green teas. You see, a friend of mine brought me back a box of Japanese green tea straight from Japan. I drank each bag (gasp! Bagged tea!) with no issues. Since then I have explored various Japanese greens from various vendors with great success! I've tried different Chinese greens - no success. 

I will go into further detail about the differences between Japanese and Chinese Green teas in a further post. But today I wanted to answer the question if there was lead in one and not the other. 

In my home Science lab I have a few chemicals, including sodium carbonate. Carbonate, when in solution, makes friends with other things in solution, like lead (if present) and forms a solid. That solid can form a milky looking substance in a clear solution like water or green tea. THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THIS EXPERIMENT! Carbonate makes friends with LOTS of other things, not just lead. 

But it's a start. 

So here's the setup of our experiment. 

We are testing a plain Chinese green tea and a plain Japanese green tea from the same vendor. They are brewed in the same type of implements and the same way - at 80 degrees Celsius for two minutes. I will also test the filtered water from my fridge used to make the green teas, and just for fun, test bottled water, too. On top of that, I decided to make two more cups of green tea, one of each, just to show what they look like NOT being tested. 

 Here are our beautiful green teas: Chinese on the left, Japanese on the right. 

 Same infusers, same conditions. 

Two beautiful teas. Two minutes of steeping time. You can see how clear the two teas are at this point. 

 Still steeping. You can see the water expanding the leaves beautifully. 

 The teas before any testing was done. 

 The teas and the filtered fridge water used to make the teas BEFORE the testing. 

 Making a solution of sodium carbonate with distilled water. 

 Dropping in a pippete-ful of sodium carbonate solution to the filtered water. 

 Dropping it in to the Japanese Sencha. 

 And finally testing the Chinese Dragonwell.  

 This was most disturbing: my beautiful fridge water, left, and BOTTLED WATER, right!! What did the carbonate make friends with! What is that precipitate??

The teas after being tested, on the left. The Chinese tea is on the left and appears very clear. The Japanese is on the right and appears milky! The teas on the right are untested. 

The most disturbing part of this test is the results of the bottled water! The Chinese tea really didn't test positive for anything much. The Japanese, I would say, had medium results, but we have no way of knowing what the carbonate formed a precipitate with. According to the chart below, and as I've stated, carbonate makes friends with a lot of other ions. 

What is needed is potassium iodide. The iodide only makes friends with silver, mercury and....LEAD!!! And I seriously doubt there will be silver or mercury in our tea. Here's hoping, anyway. 

I ordered some potassium iodide and will perform further tests when it arrives. 

Happy Steeping!

Sources:

The National Post

Solubility Chart

Personal Experience