Ericson et al. 2020 — Lead in Georgian spices

Ericson and colleagues investigated potential sources of elevated blood lead levels in Georgian children and found exceptionally high Pb concentrations in multiple spices. Although the auto-fetch row was labelled as cookware, the routeable consumer-product evidence is for spices; cookware, paint, soil, dust, toys, and water were comparison media and were generally within applied guidance values. The paper is strong direct evidence that adulterated or contaminated spices can be a high-lead exposure source in a specific market.

Key numbers

• The investigation used 682 portable XRF measurements across cookware (n=53), paint (n=207), soil (n=91), spices (n=128), toys (n=78), and other media (n=125), plus 61 dust wipes and 15 water samples.
• Six commonly used spices had elevated Pb medians: coriander 8.43 mg/kg, khmeli suneli kharcho 741.98 mg/kg, kviteli kvavili 4837.22 mg/kg, svanuri marili 1345.53 mg/kg, turmeric 1897.06 mg/kg, and utsko suneli 13.12 mg/kg.
• The highest spice Pb value was 20,058.61 mg/kg in kviteli kvavili from a home sample.
• Of 98 home spice samples, 42 (43%) had detectable Pb. Among those detected samples, the median Pb concentration was 88 mg/kg with IQR 14-1645 mg/kg.
• Bazaar samples from Adjara showed frequent detection: 14 of 17 samples (82%) had detectable Pb, with median 233 mg/kg and IQR 22-4465 mg/kg. No spices from Tbilisi or Imereti bazaars had detectable Pb in this convenience sample.
• Regional summary values for spice Pb included Adjara median 11.44 mg/kg and high 20,058.61 mg/kg; Guria median 7.56 mg/kg and high 3461.71 mg/kg; Imereti median below LOD but high 3327.72 mg/kg.
• Comparison media were much lower overall: the spice range was below LOD to 20,058.61 mg/kg, while cookware pXRF lead ranged from 0.00056% to 3.395%, toys ranged below LOD to 1098.37 ppm, soil ranged 5.65-842.7 ppm, and drinking water ranged 0.067-7.56 ppb.

Methods (brief)

The team selected 25 homes from a prior nationally representative child blood-lead survey, including homes of children with blood lead above 30 micrograms/dL and below 5 micrograms/dL. Spices were measured by portable XRF and a subset of 15 spice samples was checked by ICP-MS using AOAC 2013.06; pXRF spice Pb measurements were adjusted because ICP-MS values were approximately 73% of pXRF measurements. LOD substitution used LOD divided by the square root of two. The measured analyte was lead; no arsenic, cadmium, or mercury values are routed from this source.

Implications

Certification: The values are product-occurrence evidence for spices in the Georgian market and should be kept jurisdiction-aware. They should not be silently pooled into US-market spice benchmarks without a documented cross-market rationale.

Courses: Useful for teaching source investigations, field XRF screening with confirmatory ICP-MS, and the difference between a suspected household medium and the actual dominant exposure source.

App: Supports a market-context warning that some spices can be extreme Pb outliers, especially where adulteration or color enhancement is suspected.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• spices
• spices
• turmeric
• black-pepper
• salt
• lead
• x-ray-fluorescence
• icp-ms

Verification notes

• DOI, title, authors, and publication were read from the Annals of Global Health PDF citation block and title page.
• The PDF filename and auto-fetch row point to cookware, but the source’s own conclusion identifies spices as the elevated Pb matrix. Cookware is retained only as a comparison matrix.
• The paper reports total lead in spices by pXRF with ICP-MS subset adjustment. No brand-level values are reproduced.
• Market scope is Georgia; benchmark pooling for another jurisdiction needs explicit stratification.

Page history

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