this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
105 points (96.5% liked)

News

25357 readers
4219 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Most nutrition studies focus on things like polyphenols, caffeine, or other chemicals released during brewing, but such research overlooks a unique aspect of tea: unlike most food and drink, tea leaves are not directly consumed, and the brewing process allows tea leaves to adsorb chemicals as well as release them—most notably heavy metal toxins like lead, arsenic, or cadmium. (Adsorption is when a substance adheres to the surface of something; absorption is when a material takes in a substance.)

Well, maybe I'll start drinking tea.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 21 hours ago

and the last part

The experimentation and modeling contained in this report may be relevant to understanding the potential benefits of tea preparation on a local or global scale. The practical utility here is in recognizing and leveraging existing cultural practices for unintended benefits, especially in contexts where access to advanced water treatment is limited. While it can be very difficult to determine the individual benefits of tea consumption, these data suggest it is possible that across a large population, high levels of tea consumption may have the ability to lower metal intake by a statistically significant percentage that may be reflected in public health outcomes. We do not report on the ability of tea leaves to remediate other toxic substances, such as microorganisms or organic pollutants, but metal toxicity alone accounts for a substantial fraction of the world’s total health burden.24−28 This research raises awareness of a simple, accessible, and culturally embedded practice that may offer an unintended benefit in mitigating heavy metal exposure, particularly relevant in regions with coexisting lead contamination and high levels of tea consumption. A rudimentary estimate, working from the assumption that tea preparation removes 15% of metals while accounting for one-fifth of the average person’s liquid consumption over the day�as is possible in countries with high levels of tea consumption�would reduce lead intake from drinking water by 3% on a population level. This is an amount that could be meaningful enough to be reflected in mortality data for diseases with strong associations with metal toxicity.24,29 While not a complete solution to lead contamination, in the absence of dedicated water treatment infrastructure, this passive remediation offered by tea preparation provides a readily available and culturally integrated means of reducing lead exposure, potentially contributing to improved public health outcomes. The authors encourage future research in related fields to explore this potential and disentangle confounding variables to determine whether tea consumption has a measurable effect on metal toxicity in real-world populations. Finally, this Letter begins to explore the processing−structure−property−performance relationships in tea leaves, bringing the paradigm of materials science to an unlikely adsorbent system. The authors hope that others use this methodology to explore additional interesting phenomena in “consumed materials” like tea leaves, bioinspired membranes, and filtration media that mimic the properties of tea and repurposed materials derived from spent tea leaves.