Excessive rare earth found in China's top tea varieties

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2015-03-08

Planters of Da Hong Pao pick tea leaves on Wuyi Mountain, May 2014.
(File photo/ Xinhua)

The Beijing Food and Drug Administration unveiled four Chinese varieties of tea that contain rare earth metal up to 3.5 times the regulated limit, reports our Chinese language sister newspaper Want Daily.

The teas that were named are: Tieguanyin from Anxi in Fujian, Longjing from Guangshan, Henan, Da Hong Pao from the Wuyi Mountain region and black tea from Jiangsu province. All of these are popular varieties, specifically Tieguanyin and Longjing, which have been listed in China's top ten premium selections of teas.

Among those named, the Da Hong Pao, a prime variety of oolong tea from Wuyi Mountain, contains 6.9 milligrams (mg) of rare earth element, almost 3.5 times the maximum quantity of 2 mg allowed per kilogram. The Tieguanyin from Fujian follows with 6.9 mg/kg.

The tea from Fujian is most frequently found to have excessive amounts of heavy metal pollutants. Certain Longjing teas, in addition to containing rare earth metal, have misleading labels boasting a higher quality tea than what tests show.

The varieties in questions have been removed from market shelves.

It is long been known that tea grown in China contain excessive amount of rare earth elements, which are added into chemical fertilizers used by 90% of tea farmers to stimulate growth, which in turn produces more buds and heavier leaves, according to reports from China's NetEase news portal.

Tea producers, however, say that the issue with too much rare earth elements is exclusive to China as there is no other nation regulating consumable quantities of the metal. They also claim that the rare earth is part of the natural makeup of the soil, instead of from fertilizers. Based on these arguments, the farmers are calling for a revision of the regulations.

Rare earth is a set of 17 chemical elements that occur in nature, with China being a major global producer. It is widely applied in chemical engineering, metallurgy, weaving and other industries.

Overdoses of the heavy metal could damage the kidneys, liver, neural system and fertility.