Buy American

Vegetarian Times, April, 2005

Recent headlines proclaiming that one of five Ayurvedic herbal medicine products contains toxic levels of lead, mercury and arsenic were wildly misleading. The study on which the news stories were based, published in the December 15, 2004 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, involved a small sample of products manufactured in India or Pakistan and sold in South Asian groceries in Boston.

The American Herbal Products Association points out that the ingredients found in the sample have been illegal in American-made dietary supplements since 1906.