 If Ayurvedic herbal preparations are often contaminated with toxic metals, should we stay away from amla and trifola, two of the three most antioxidant-packed foods in the world? Are we going to be forced to go back to cloves, number 4 down the list? In the Boston study, both amla and trifola were repeatedly tested. Different samples, different brands, and not a single one had any detectable lead, mercury, arsenic, or cadmium. Good news, and neither had any detectable pesticides either. But maybe that's just Boston. If you want to do a broad survey of the global market, we need to start shopping on the internet. Publishing the Journal of the American Medical Association led mercury and arsenic in Ayurvedic medicines sold via the internet. Once again, one-fifth of the medicines contaminated. When the Boston study came out, there were calls for mandatory testing of all imported dietary supplements for toxic heavy metals. But this study found that the prevalence of metals in U.S. manufactured Ayurvedic medicine was the same, if not higher than those imported from India. They found loved levels violating safety limits in products with names like Worry Free, a pediatric preparation, mercury in products like Breath of Life, and arsenic levels exceeding EPA limits in trifola, mercury in trifola, and lead in trifola. Okay, I guess we can scratch that off the list. That's why my smoothies have amla, not trifola. Just to put things in perspective, though, Consumer Reports recently remeasured mercury levels in cantuna, and while a serving of trifola may have 46 micrograms of mercury, the average can of white tuna has 1,345. But as far as I'm concerned, practically any mercury is too much mercury.