Forget those noodles

The Maggi storm is a reminder of India’s huge lead challenge. But noodles aren’t the problem

When Maggi-gate broke, I was, smug in the knowledge that I had never eaten the (once) iconic noodles. There was no chance I was slow-poisoning myself. You see, my family eats mostly home-cooked fresh food, much of which I cook. A quick review of the scientific literature quickly dispatched my smugness.

Let’s start with root vegetables, such as radish and carrot. Both had lead three times, or 300% higher, than safe limits, according to a 2013 study by three Kolkata researchers, who also found spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, beet, brinjal, and spinach with unsafe levels of lead. Chilli, ladyfinger and tomato appeared safe. Now, this study was done in Kolkata, but other studies returned similar results nationwide. When I was editor of Indian Express in Mumbai in the late 1990s, we commissioned tests on spinach and fish and found lead levels many times higher that safe, if I remember.

As Karnataka and Singapore declare Maggi safe, Nestle tussles with regulators over methods and samples and more states jump on the ban-wagon, it is increasingly clear that the noodle industry—even if guilty—is less than a bit player.

Lead is now in the air we breathe—thankfully removed from much vehicular exhaust after Indian petrol became lead free in 2000—the water we drink, the soil that nurtures our crops and grass that slaughterhouse animals eat. Whether you are vegetarian or non-vegetarian, nothing is really safe because India is turning into a contaminated, environmental wasteland. Lead is no more than an exemplar, an indicator, a marker of degradation. Numerous contaminants endanger us—including lead’s heavy metal cousins, such as cadmium, mercury and arsenic—but let’s stick with what is one of the commonest and most dangerous of the toxics.

Lead is among the most toxic heavy metals known because it is soluble in water, reacts easily with a variety of chemicals and does not break down over time. It accumulates instead in the tissue of plants and animals, its levels increasing as it goes up the biological chain. When released from the earth and used in, say, a factory, it can get into the water, move into the soil, into products such as noodle tastemakers, permeate into spinach and humans.

When it finally gets to the liver (the body’s main storage organ) or kidney—its favourite growth spots, moving out at much slower rates than it moves in—it messes up cellular functions. “Over time, with chronic exposure, it starts to seep out in to the blood and find new organs, along with nerves, to accumulate (in) and produce abnormalities,” Ipsita Mazumdar, a toxicologist with the KPC Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata (and co-author of Kolkata study I mentioned previously), told me.

Lead can stay for generations and get passed from mother to child. Children are especially vulnerable, and at low levels, lead can impair IQ, growth, behaviour, reading and learning. But no level of lead is really safe. At high levels, it can lead to convulsions, coma or death, among other toxic effects.

In 1999, the first major such study of Indian children, revealed 51% of those below age 12 had blood lead levels of “great concern”, higher than 10 μg/dL, or micrograms per decilitre (3 micrograms is the limit fixed by the US Centres for Disease Control for children, although low levels can also impair behaviour and neurological functions). In 2005, 76% of children in Delhi and Mumbai had levels between 5 to 20 μg/dL, reported a study in the global journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Poorer children were most vulnerable, with much of the lead from contaminated dust and drinking water (carried in lead pipes), although lead-based industries also contaminated the air.

Even the process of cooking at home is compromised by lead, various studies have revealed. Lead was present in chilli powder more than twice and turmeric powder more than 10 times levels considered safe, according to a 2014 study by Indian researchers in the International Journal of Current Medical and Applied Sciences. Lead levels were low in black pepper powder, chat masala, curry powder, and garam masala, but chilli and turmeric powders are the staples of every Indian kitchen. Spices imported from India were the cause of toxic levels of lead in the blood of children and adults in the US, according to a 2010 study in the journalPediatrics.

This week, a live test of turmeric and vermillion samples in Bengaluru by scientists from the National Referral Centre for Lead Projects in India revealed lead levels more than 100 times higher than acceptable. Centre director Thuppil Venkatesh said lead could be in paints (a third of paint brands studied recently showed concentrations up to 111 times Indian standards) inverters, toys, unbranded cosmetics and traditional medicines (ayurvedic medicines have revealed lead content 100 to 10,000 times above safe levels) and Ganesha idols.

Are we then doomed to be poisoned by lead? Not at all. “(Lead poisoning) is very much preventable with adequate timely action”, said Venkatesh in a2014 paper. In the US, after measures to implement lead pollution kicked in—starting in 1970—blood lead levels in children fell more than 80%. The Maggi-noodles kerfuffle is a timely reminder of India’s long-ignored, formidable regulatory problems. It is not the problem.

Samar Halarnkar is editor of IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, public-interest journalism, non-profit organization. He also writes the column Our Daily Bread in Mint Lounge.