Pesticides in your cuppa? There were traces of pesticides in nearly 40% of the brands we tested--should you worry? (Test: tea).

Publication: Choice (Chippendale, Australia)

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Australian Consumers' Association

Never thought about pesticides in your daily cuppa? Neither had we until our German counterparts ran tests and found pesticide residues in a large number of teas. So we set about testing the teas available in Australia: black, green and herbal infusions.

We tested 55 widely available brands, all except one in teabag form, for over 100 pesticides. We tested the dry product, not brewed.

With herbal infusions, we specifically looked for brands with rosehip in them because the German results found a lot of them to contain pentachlorophenol (PCP)--thought to be present as a result of contamination of rosehip during drying in ovens used for drying wood as well, or by hying rosehips on wooden racks for drying (PCP is a timber preservative).

We also looked at herbal infusions that contained citrus fruit or peel because the German results found some of them to contain thiabendazole, a fungicide commonly used on citrus fruit.

For a full list of the brands tested and which pesticides were found, see the table on page 32.

WHY ARE PESTICIDES USED?

A multitude of pests attack tea, most commonly mites, leaf-eating beetles and caterpillars. Weeds are a problem as well, and herbicides are used to kill them.

The patterns of pesticide use are different from one tea-producing country to another because they have different pest problems. The fact that we found multiple residues in a number of samples may be due to the fact that most teas are a highly blended product, meaning that tea from numerous producers may be in a single sample.

THE RESULTS

We found residues in 21 samples--seven out of 17 green teas, eight out of 20 black teas and six out of 18 herbal infusions. Happily, all the teas that claim to be organic got the all-clear.

We only found PCP in one of the herbal infusions (TWININGS Cranberry, Raspberry & Elderflower), in contrast to the Germans finding it in numerous products. And we didn't find thiabendazole in any of the fruit infusions.

Some pesticides have a maximum residue limit (MRL), which is the amount of a pesticide that's legally allowed in a food. It isn't a safety limit but rather a limit generally based on tests that show what residue will be left when the pesticide is used as intended (in other words, following good agricultural practice). Many MRLs were set years ago when there was less evidence of risk from low-level exposure.

Seven of the brands contained one pesticide (cypermethrin) above the maximum residue limit for tea, with three products (the FORMOSAN green and black teas and RED SEAL Green Tea)...

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