In 2002 I ordered a tagine from a vendor, online. I had made a point of communicating with the vendor first, to make sure that the tagine was lead-free. They assured me that not only was it lead-free, but that it was the same tagine that they supplied to restaurants all across the country. After cooking with it twice, and serving the food to both guests and my own family (including our young son), I decided to test it, and guess what? It had lead in it. Here’s our story.
After the tagine arrived, we cooked a family meal in it. Then we had friends over, and cooked another meal for them and our own family.
Then, after using it twice, a nagging concern made me go out and get a lead test kit.
The tagine tested positive.
Great, I’d cooked and served two meals, nearly back-to-back, which had included acidic foods (like tomatoes), likely to enhance the lead’s leaching into our food.
I figured that, still, with it being just two meals, the odds were low that we’d ingested enough lead to worry about – but I was concerned for our son, who was barely 3 years old at the time.
To be safe, I called poison control.
It was then that I got really concerned, because they advised me that we needed to get the whole family tested immediately. The intellectual side of me was saying “How could two uses possibly lead to a dangerous level”, but the emotional and mom side of me was terribly worried. Especially as cooking, and acidic foods (like the tomatoes we’d cooked in the tagine, twice) exacerbate the leaching.
So, I got tested. I wanted to be tested first, because I did not want to put our son through the trauma of a blood test. I figured my test would show no lead, and so we’d be fine.
Here is something I wrote when I received those test results:
“Well, my blood lead tests results are in, and while I do have a detectable blood level above trace, and by inference so would our son (we tested me first, to try and avoid the trauma to him of a blood test), it seemed certain that any level he had, even taking into account his much smaller mass, would not be high enough that they would actually *do* anything (which level would be 10 micrograms per decileter or higher; my level was 1.4). So we’re as reassured as we can be, under the circumstances, and darned thankful that we tested the bl**dy tagine before using it any further.”
Along the way, I learned more than I cared to about lead in the body. You (well, I) sort of take for granted basic, background knowledge, such as “don’t eat lead, it’s bad for you”. But when you start having to look at “exactly why is it bad”, “how much is truly bad”, “how can you undo the effects”, etc., it’s never that simple. Some interesting tidbits:
One of the reasons that lead is so nasty is that it closely mimics
calcium, so your body’s calcium receptors snap it up. This also means that
the level of calcium in your diet can influence how readily your body
absorbs ingested lead (more actual calcium, somewhat less lead absorption).
The half-life for lead in the blood is actually relatively short (30
days, if I recall correctly – much of what I gleaned was from hours of
phone calls to many state/local/federal/medical authorities). This is why
chronic exposure is so much worse than an isolated exposure – which will
work its way out of the system.
Lead is also stored in the bones, as it readily crosses the blood/bone
barrier. The bones and blood work to achieve equilibrium, so that as the
lead leaves your blood system, the lead stored in your bones will be
released into your blood stream until the levels again achieve equilibrium
(same levels in blood and bones) – I actually found this fascinating. Our
pediatrician told us that this is generally true, not just for things such
as lead – this principle is actually fairly well-known to anyone who has
taken some level of X sciences, but I hadn’t, so I found it fascinating.
Lead does not readily cross the blood/brain barrier, and so once it
gets into the brain, it is believed that it will never leave the brain
(absent chelation, which may, or may not, work, and which is by most
accounts horribly difficult to endure – which is why they will only
consider it if you have a level of 10 or greater). It is also believed
that it only gets into the brain at higher levels.
Mind you, I am a layperson to the extreme here, so do NOT take any of the
above as gospel – it is just what one person learned/was told in the course
of trying to find out what we could/should do about our own lead exposure.
I of course called the merchant from whom we had purchased the tagine; I
was fortunate enough to have the owner answer the phone when I called, so I
was able to drop my little bombshell on her directly (“there’s lead in them
thar tagines”). She seemed genuinely concerned and surprised, and refunded
my purchase price immediately.
Still, given that they had told me directly (in a previous call) that “these are the same tagines we sell to restaurants all over the country”, I felt it was serious enough that I tried to report it to the FDA, and local (to NYC, where the merchant is) health authorities.
It took me 2 days to get through to anyone who seemed to care at either agency, and to be honest, even though I finally reached someone at both levels who seemed concerned, and took the details, I still wasn’t convinced that there wouild be any follow-up. Which was really frustrating.
So, that’s our story. You can be sure that we are much more aware of lead now!
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