do.rflex wrote:
>
> Ayurvedic medicines -- herbal mixtures dating back thousands of years
> in India and increasingly popular in the West -- are frequently
> contaminated with lead, mercury or arsenic, according to a study
> published today.
>
> A fifth of the nearly 200 concoctions tested contained levels of the
> toxic metals that, if taken at the maximum recommended doses, would
> surpass California's safety guidelines.
>
> [...]
>
> About 80% of the samples showed no detectable metal content.
>
> But among the remaining samples, the toxic metals showed up at similar
> rates in both U.S. and Indian-made products.
>
> Of the U.S. products, 21% contained lead, 3% contained mercury and 3%
> had arsenic. Among the Indian-made medicines, 17% had lead, 7% had
> mercury and none contained arsenic.
>
> The researchers and other experts surmised that the contamination had
> less to do with the manufacturing process than the soils in which the
> herbs were grown.
>
> "The raw material is all coming from India," said Kush Khanna, who
> runs Bazaar of India in Berkeley, a manufacturer of ayurvedic
> medicines started by his father in 1971.
>
> Full article, Los Angeles Times: http://tinyurl.com/65tke4
Those would be the bhasmais which they are referring to. I know the
Bazaar of India folks. As mentioned they and other importers and
manufacturers of ayurvedic products have been wanting some kind of
standards. The problem is the same as with the other supplement
manufacturers, the support for this is from big pharma who want to get
rid of these little guys so they can have that market to themselves
which of course if patently unfair. They want standards that only they
can afford to test for and so their proposals are really what we know as
"pull the ladder up laws." They get a monopoly and will probably sell
inferior products at outrages prices. That's why big pharma is
essentially a gangster run business.
