You can drink as much as you want, as long as you’re drinking the green tea and throwing away the leaves or bags. If you’re not pregnant and drinking only green tea, it doesn’t matter where you get your tea. So, how much tea is safe to drink? Based on the most stringent safety limits in the world, such as California’s Prop 65 parameters, and the largest studies of tea lead contamination from around the world, I was able to come up with guidelines I outline in my video Lead Contamination of Tea. In terms of lead, the source of the tea-that is, the country of origin-appears to be the most important factor.

However, a study of 30 common teas taken from North American store shelves showed no less toxic element contamination in organic teas than regular teas, though, organic teas would presumably have much less pesticide contamination. This means the health risk from lead may be 100 times lower for green tea compared to oolong and black.īecause certain fungicides may have heavy metal impurities, one might assume organic teas would be less contaminated. As well, the lead in black and oolong tea appears to be released much more readily into the tea water when brewed. Young tea leaves appear to have two to six times less lead than mature leaves, so the young leaves that are used to make green and white tea have significantly less lead than the older leaves used to make black and oolong tea. Just like larger and longer-living fish accumulate more mercury, longer-living tea leaves accumulate more lead. This suggests that leaded gas, which wasn’t banned in China until the year 2000, may be playing a role in the contamination of tea grown there. And, the closer to the highway the tea is grown, the higher the lead levels. The more lead there is in the soil, the more lead there is that ends up in the tea leaves. China is one of the world’s biggest tea exporters, but their rapid industrialization has raised concerns about contamination with lead, a toxin that can affect almost every organ in the body. What if you drink something from China? Tea. What if you don’t live in China or eat anything produced there? You could still be exposed to the mercury that settles in the oceans if you eat fish and other seafood. China burns about half of the world’s coal, spewing heavy metals such as mercury and lead into the atmosphere that affect the development of neighboring children.

Arsenic tea