For many years, there have been concerns that the levels of pesticides in traditional, complementary Chinese medicine, and the World Health Organisation has reported that the herbs could actually do damage to our wellness and wellbeing. The American Herbal products association and the American Botanical Council have been involved over the past couple of years and have identified where the problems of contamination are occurring. Many of the cases of contamination seem to occur in India and China, possibly due to the environmental safety laws being far more lax.
A new study has now been published, called Chinese Herbs: Elixir of Health or Pesticide Cocktail and it investigates further the effects that these traditional Chinese herbs could have on our health. The report was sponsored by the environmental group, Greenpeace, and it exposes many cases of unsafe practice when it comes to the use of pesticides. This includes using pesticides that have been banned, or using pesticides that have high levels of toxic agents. This report could do huge damage to the Chinese herb trade, which has previously come under a lot of scrutiny due to concerns about contamination.
China is the world’s largest supplier of herbs, and so stands to lose a lot from the damaging effect that this report could have. Chinese herbal exports bring in a total revenue of hundreds of millions of US dollars, and Chinese people also rely very heavily on herbs for their health. Not only is this potentially a huge financial problem, it is also possibly a huge medical problem for China, as more and more people’s health could be affected by the poisons that they are ingesting in their daily natural medicines.
The study found pesticides in 48 samples out of a total of 65 sample batches that they investigated. Many of these were heavily contaminated.