Health
Tea Leaves Can Steep Away Lead, Study Finds
Tea leaves pull heavy metals from water, significantly lowering the amount of lead and other dangerous compounds that people may be unknowingly drinking, a new study found.
Recent research has highlighted potential applications for used tea leaves, from biofuels to gluten-free cookies. But the new study shows a public health benefit from something that countless people are already doing. About five billion cups of tea are consumed each day around the world, according to one estimate.
“You can see the implications,” said Vinayak Dravid, a materials scientist at Northwestern and an author of the study, which was published this week. “How often do we touch billions of people?”
In many countries, the water used to steep tea is contaminated with lead from aging pipes. In the United States, nine million homes get their water through pipes that contain lead, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Lead is especially dangerous to children. Exposure can lead to developmental delays and behavioral issues.
Dr. Dravid and his team tested how different types of tea — black, white, oolong, green, rooibos, herbal, loose leaf and plain old Lipton — behaved in water with varying amounts of lead.
The tea was then allowed to steep for variable periods of time. Afterward, the scientists measured how much lead remained in the water.
Compounds called catechins in tea leaves act like “little Velcro” hooks to which lead molecules latch, said Michelle Francl, a chemist at Bryn Mawr College and the author of a book on the chemistry of tea. Dr. Francl also said that the “ridges and valleys” of the tea leaves provided the necessary surface area for that interaction.
While those properties have been known for some time, Dr. Dravid and his colleagues were the first to look at the lead-detoxifying powers of a single cup of tea. They found that black tea leaves became wrinkled after roasting and were thus best equipped to absorb heavy metals.
“Green tea and black tea had fairly equivalent amounts of metal absorbed,” said another author, Benjamin Shindel, who was a doctoral candidate at Northwestern while working on the study.
White tea, on the other hand, undergoes a much more gentle preparation. Its leaves remain smooth, offering less surface area from which to draw heavy metals from water. Herbal tea enthusiasts may be disappointed to learn that chamomile tea does a poor job of heavy-metal filtering, too, probably because it is made with chamomile flowers, not tea leaves.
Still, these distinctions between different types of tea were not the most relevant factor. “It’s much more important how long you’re brewing the tea for,” Dr. Shindel said.
The researchers found that steeping a cup of black tea for five minutes could remove 15 percent of lead from the water, which is helpful, but there is “no safe level” of lead exposure, according to the E.P.A.
“With lead and other contaminants, any decrease is meaningful to some extent, especially if you have a lack of resources or infrastructure that would already remediate some of these problem materials,” said Caroline Harms, who was an undergraduate student of Dr. Dravid at Northwestern while working on the study.
The longer the steeping time, however, the more bitter the resulting tea. Last year, Dr. Francl caused a minor international scandal by suggesting that adding salt to tea could mitigate its bitterness. But even that controversial chemistry hack has its limits. “It’s not really drinkable after 10 minutes of steeping tea, and no amount of salt is going to help that,” she said.
Some samples in the study had to be steeped for 24 hours, which would render the tea undrinkable.
The study’s authors said they were less motivated to make public health prescriptions for policymakers than to study a hidden benefit of a global habit.
The researchers estimated that a country where people drank large amounts of tea would have about 3 percent less lead ingestion from the water supply than a (hypothetical) identical country that did not drink any tea.
“How wonderful,” said Henrietta Lovell, the founder of the Rare Tea Company. Ms. Lovell, who supplies teas to exclusive restaurants, pointed out that tea had been used in China for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. “The more I learn about tea, the more fabulous and fascinating it becomes,” Ms. Lovell said.
Dr. Francl believes that the new findings could eventually pave the way to a scalable method of making sure people aren’t ingesting heavy metals. “Given that clean water is such a global issue,” she said, “if there was a way to take this proof of concept and tweak it to produce potable water at the end, that would be pretty good.”
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A new study from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, along with Oslo University Hospital in Norway, may have discovered a way to detect biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease in the blood up to decades earlier.
In the very early stages of the disease, the body goes through changes related to DNA repair and stress in cells. These changes leave detectable clues in the blood before major brain damage occurs, according to a press release for the study.
This could allow for early detection of Parkinson’s, when treatments might have a better chance of slowing or preventing serious damage.
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The processes of DNA repair and cellular stress response can occur for up to 20 years in Parkinson’s patients before motor symptoms fully develop, according to the researchers.
The team used machine learning to discover patterns linked to these processes, which were not found in healthy individuals or patients who were already diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
European researchers discovered a way to detect early Parkinson’s disease via a blood test. (iStock)
Annikka Polster, assistant professor at the Department of Life Sciences at Chalmers who led the study, suggested in a statement that the study has found an “important window of opportunity” in which the disease can be detected “before motor symptoms caused by nerve damage in the brain appear.”
“The fact that these patterns only show at an early stage and are no longer activated when the disease has progressed further also makes it interesting to focus on the mechanisms to find future treatments,” she added.
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Polster confirmed that the study highlighted biomarkers that “likely reflect some of the early biology of the disease,” which “paves the way for broad screening tests via blood samples: a cost-effective, easily accessible method.”
The findings were published in npj Parkinson’s Disease.
Blood tests for early Parkinson’s diagnosis could become more common, researchers predicted. (iStock)
The researchers plan to further develop tools to more easily detect these active mechanisms and understand how they work, according to the university.
The team predicts that, within five years, blood tests for early Parkinson’s diagnoses could become more common within clinical practice. They are also optimistic about the development of new drugs to prevent or treat the disease.
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“If we can study the mechanisms as they happen, it could provide important keys to understanding how they can be stopped and which drugs might be effective,” Polster said.
“This may involve new drugs, but also drug repurposing, where we can use drugs developed for diseases other than Parkinson’s because the same gene activities or mechanisms are active.”
More than 10 million people around the world are estimated to be living with Parkinson’s disease. (iStock)
Study limitations
The researchers acknowledged that the study had some limitations, including that the gene activity measured in the blood only partly matches what’s happening in the brain.
External factors, such as medication use, may have affected the results, they added.
Also, the study population may not represent all people, so findings may not apply broadly.
By the numbers
More than 10 million people around the world are estimated to be living with Parkinson’s disease, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation. About 90,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed each year.
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Numbers are expected to continue rising because Parkinson’s is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s.
While research is advancing, there is no cure for the disease, although medications are available to manage symptoms.
Common motor symptoms of Parkinson’s include tremors, slowed movement, muscle stiffness, balance and walking difficulties. (iStock)
Common motor symptoms include tremors, slowed movement, muscle stiffness, balance and walking difficulties, a shuffling gait and freezing episodes.
Non-motor symptoms include loss of smell, sleep problems, constipation, fatigue, depression or anxiety, speech and swallowing changes, cognitive slowing and reduced facial expression, according to Parkinson’s Foundation and Mayo Clinic.
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Danish Anwer, a doctoral student at the Department of Life Sciences at Chalmers and the study’s first author, detailed in a statement how Parkinson’s affects the brain.
“By the time the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease appear, 50% to 80% of the relevant brain cells are often already damaged or gone,” he said. “The study is an important step toward facilitating early identification of the disease and counteracting its progression before it has gone this far.”
“By the time you have actual motor symptoms … a large majority of affected cells have been damaged and destroyed.”
Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel agreed that Parkinson’s is a “very difficult disease” with an increasing global impact.
“By the time you have actual motor symptoms affecting gait, tremor, etc., a large majority of affected cells have been damaged and destroyed,” he told Fox News Digital.
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Siegel called the new research “exciting,” suggesting that it “opens the door for earlier and more effective diagnosis and treatment.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the study authors for comment.
Health
Colorado declares disaster emergency as presumptive bird flu outbreak hits facility with 1.3M chickens
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Colorado Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera on Thursday declared a disaster emergency for a massive outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Weld County north of Denver.
The Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) told local outlet FOX31 News there was a presumptive positive test for HPAI, also known as the bird flu, at an egg laying facility in the county.
CDA officials told the outlet dead chickens are being tested at the facility, which is home to 1.3 million chickens, due to an “elevated mortality report.”
It is unclear how many birds are potentially infected.
USDA workers disinfect a work crew amid a bird flu outbreak on a farm. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
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HPAI was first detected in the U.S. in February 2022, impacting wild birds and poultry.
Records released by the CDA show there was a rash of outbreaks in Weld County in July 2024, affecting three commercial poultry facilities housing a total of nearly 3.4 million chickens.
Though the names of the businesses are not public, one of the affected facilities reported having 1,313,800 chickens.
A baby chick is tested for avian influenza. (iStock)
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It is unclear if that facility is the same facility potentially affected in the latest outbreak.
The state’s declaration activates the State Emergency Operations Plan and directs the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) to take all necessary and appropriate actions to assist the affected jurisdictions with their response, recovery and mitigation efforts.
The action also authorizes the use of disaster emergency funds and allows the OEM to mobilize state resources, make contracts and awards using emergency procurement procedures and encumber and expend funds as determined by the director of the OEM.
CDA officials told the outlet dead chickens are being tested at the facility. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo)
At the time of the declaration, Primavera was acting as governor; Gov. Jared Polis was in Washington, D.C., attending a Colorado River negotiation meeting.
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The governor’s office said the decision was made in coordination with Polis.
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