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March 23, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams

16:52

Ginkgo Biloba herbs found heavily contaminated with toxic lead

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	Are your ginkgo supplements contaminated with toxic lead and other heavy metals?
	Well, the answer may be yes, depending on which brand you buy and where they came from.
	My name is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
	I'm the editor of naturalnews.com and the lab director here at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab that you see behind me.
	We have the ICP-MS instrumentation here, the auto sampler, the chemical fume hood, the external Standard generator, the FTIR in the background, and so on and so forth.
	It's a fully equipped laboratory.
	And here we test supplements and foods and superfoods for heavy metals contamination.
	Specifically, I test for lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, sometimes tungsten.
	We also check for aluminum, copper, and even, believe it or not, we look at radioisotopes such as cesium-137 in other products, not in these.
	I also look for uranium and strontium, things like that in some of the radiation research areas.
	But for these products right here, what's interesting is these are all ginkgo biloba supplements.
	From many different brands.
	This is the Gaia Herb company.
	This actually says spirulina because our Gaia Herb Ginkgo supplement is off at the photographer for the website because it was the cleanest product that we found.
	Gaia Herb, their products are just consistently really, really clean.
	We've tested many, but this spectrum runs roughly from low levels of lead to much higher levels of lead to the alarming level of five parts per million lead that we found in this ginkgo leaf powder, country of origin, China, sold by Star West Botanicals, which is a really great company, by the way.
	I don't have anything against Star West.
	They're great.
	I buy stuff from Star West.
	They're a great company, but they did sell us this bag of ginkgo that is heavily contaminated with lead.
	Which is a toxic heavy metal.
	Now, there's lead in the Now Foods Ginkgo supplement here, but not as high as Star West or even what we bought from Frontier here, Frontier Co-op.
	There's some lead in this from Erwin, what is this, Erwin Naturals?
	There's less lead here, less lead here.
	All these brands were virtually free of lead down here.
	Gaia Herbs, the Whole Foods brand of Ginkgo, had virtually zero lead.
	This, what is this, Nutrigold, had almost zero lead.
	Nature's Bounty, Swanson, was very clean in terms of heavy metals and so on, Doctors Best and so on.
	Now you can see these results at labs.naturalnews.com.
	But I'd like to explain to you why you see such wide variation in these herbs.
	And where is that coming from and why does it matter in terms of your health?
	Now ginkgo biloba herbs are used to typically increase cognitive function through increased blood flow circulation to the brain.
	And there's a lot of good scientific evidence that talks about the ginkgo herb having this well-documented effect.
	And for many people, they use it to enhance their memory or to, let's say, decrease symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer's, basically to enhance cognitive function.
	And you find it's used among a lot of senior citizens.
	As people get older, they get more concerned about brain function and they turn to these types of herbal supplements to help them.
	What's especially concerning to me about what I'm finding in some of these supplements over on this end of the spectrum is that the toxic heavy metal lead that we have found at 5 parts per million here, that's 5,000 parts per billion.
	That's really high.
	That's over 10 times higher than what we found in rice protein from China, by the way.
	So it's very, very high.
	And by the way, if you took just one gram of this, you would exceed California Prop 65 limits of daily consumption of lead by a thousand percent, or essentially you would equal about a thousand percent of the Prop 65 limit.
	That's a lot of lead to be taking in from a single product.
	But what's especially concerning about this is that lead is a toxic heavy metal that is well documented to damage cognitive function.
	Lead causes lowered IQs in children.
	This fact is irrefutable.
	It is widely documented in the scientific literature and in environmental science.
	Everybody who studies lead and other toxic heavy metals knows that lead damages brain function.
	If a pregnant woman takes a lot of lead in terms of foods and dietary supplements, her child is likely to be born with diminished IQ and reduced academic potential for their entire life.
	So lead also causes damage to the skeletal system, bone damage.
	Lead damages your heart.
	Lead is linked to cancer.
	Lead is a toxic, toxic substance, even at very low levels, such as one part per million, or in this case, five parts per million.
	So, lead has no nutritive function.
	It's not a vitamin.
	It's not a neutral substance.
	It is a toxic heavy metal.
	And the fact that we're seeing it in some of these supplements from China is very, very concerning.
	We also found it at very high levels in this imported product from Frontier Natural Products Co-op.
	Star West and Frontier, I think, are competitors.
	They both import bulk herbs from China and other countries and sell them very affordably on Amazon.com or through their own websites, but it is my belief that neither one of these companies really does any testing of the products they sell because I think if they did, they wouldn't sell these because They're so high in lead that it would be irresponsible to sell them if you were aware of it.
	So I think they're not aware of it until maybe now.
	But it's my belief...
	See, Natural News has a store, too.
	And the whole way I got into all this testing was we were testing raw materials for our own store.
	And we were rejecting batch after batch after batch because they had very high levels of heavy metals.
	But what I found is that other companies were happy to sell those same batches even though we would reject them.
	I wouldn't sell that kind of...
	I wouldn't sell this.
	Not a chance.
	In fact, Gosh, what is this?
	This is 20 times higher than what I would even consider selling.
	No, yeah, 20 times higher than what I would consider selling.
	Yeah, and 50 times higher than what I typically would like to see in products that we sell.
	So, these companies I don't think are testing their products, which means they don't really know what they're selling to you and what you might be taking in.
	Now these companies down here, well I know Gaia Herbs, for example, does a lot of testing and their products are typically grown in the USA. Not all of them, but most of them.
	I think their ginkgo is grown in the USA, or if not, it's from a very, very pristine source.
	So, across the spectrum, and there are other brands that aren't even represented here, but every different company has a different philosophy of what they're trying to achieve in terms of product safety versus product price.
	And on this end, you get companies that have kind of cheap, I mean, you know, more bulk for your dollar, but they tend to be more contaminated because they're from China.
	And by the way, China, the Chinese government, recently declassified documents proving or admitting that 20% of the farms in China are heavily contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead and cadmium and arsenic and even mercury.
	So this is not controversial anymore.
	China has admitted that their farms are heavily contaminated, whereas farms in the United States tend to be much, much cleaner.
	If you grow food in California, it tends to be really clean in terms of heavy metals.
	The same is true in Canada.
	The same is true in the European Union.
	And even in places like New Zealand and Australia, it tends to be very clean.
	Even some countries in South America have clean foods like Bolivia.
	We've tested products from Bolivia that are very, very clean in terms of heavy metals.
	It tends to be China and India that are the worst global offenders of toxic heavy metals in herbal supplements.
	So when you see a product like this from Star West that says the country of origin is China, you should have a question mark.
	You should do your research.
	You should ask, well, on this lot number, what's the heavy metals test result?
	How much lead is in this?
	You should ask the manufacturer.
	In this case, that's Star West.
	You should ask them for that data.
	Under FDA regulations, they're required to do that testing, but they're not required to release it publicly.
	But if you ask them if they're not hiding anything, they shouldn't have any problem with sharing that information with you.
	I'm pretty sure Gaia Herbs would have no problem telling you what their test results showed in every single lot that they sell.
	In fact, they have a Meet Your Herbs program where you can key in the lot number on most of their products.
	Here it is.
	If you go to GaiaHerbs.com and you key in the lot number, it'll tell you Where that's from?
	Like, I think what farm it was grown on.
	So that's a really amazing program.
	That's one of the reasons why I love Gaia Herbs.
	And no, they didn't tell me, they didn't pay me to say that.
	I'm all about transparency, so I really like that program.
	In fact, of all these companies, when it comes to herbs like Ginkgo, I would trust Gaia the most, by far.
	Because they have that level of transparency where these companies over here, yet...
	You don't really know.
	I mean, it says it comes from China, but gosh, that's kind of the most polluted country in the world.
	Is that where you want to get your ginkgo biloba herbs to boost brain function?
	Well, don't you know that if the lead is in the product, the lead goes in your blood, and the blood's getting pumped to your brain.
	Your brain's absorbing lead.
	What's happening?
	You're just dropping IQ points, man, by the hour.
	It's the worst case of an herb that boosts blood flow to the brain while it's delivering lead to the brain.
	It's kind of like the perfect storm of diminished IQ. That's not what we need to be doing to ourselves.
	So don't buy Ginkgo from China.
	And demand accountability and transparency across all of these brands.
	Most of these brands are trusted brands and really do a good job on quality control.
	And that's why I think we're seeing very, very low levels of lead out in this area.
	And even these are just kind of middle-of-the-road lead levels and certainly nowhere near this.
	So all these companies have some level of quality control.
	My goal here at the Natural News Forensic Food Labs is to do this work in the public interest.
	I purchased every one of these products.
	Well, Natural News did.
	Out-of-pocket money.
	We built this laboratory.
	Very, very expensive.
	There's no revenue model in us telling you the truth about this.
	In fact, in today's society, telling the truth is a really fast way to lose a lot of money and lose friends, believe me, because some of these companies may not like what I'm reporting.
	I'm not attacking StarWest.
	They're a great company, but I don't know.
	They may not like the fact that I'm talking about their product.
	Well, Hey, I'd love to say great things about Star West, but clean up your products.
	Don't sell that stuff.
	And you'll get my support, really.
	It's very simple.
	I say great things about Gaia because their products are clean, not because they don't pay me anything.
	And I'm critical of this product because it's dirty.
	It's that simple.
	If we could take all these products and push everything over to this side where it's really, really clean, I would have great things to say about all of them.
	What drives what I say is what the instrument tells me.
	It's very simple.
	The laws of physics get translated into the data that I then share publicly in the public interest as a food researcher.
	I mean, we're conducting real science here using state-of-the-art instrumentation, top-of-the-line stuff.
	Irrefutable what we're finding in this.
	In fact, all the laboratory results we've ever published from this lab, none of them have ever been refuted.
	Ever.
	No one has ever found or even claimed that these numbers aren't true.
	In fact, company after company confirms our findings here.
	We know what we're doing.
	This is all calibrated.
	We're running EPA methodologies that are slightly modified for food.
	Specifically, EPA 200.8 is one of the methodologies that we use.
	And I could go into deep details about how we do quality control You know, external standards, the internal standards as well, the blanks that we run every few samples, the multiple runs of each product that we use to make sure we're getting good samples,
	the sample introduction system that we're using, which is really amazing, and results in very, very consistent results with very little drift, as it's called, in laboratory testing.
	So we're getting good numbers.
	We're doing this for the right reasons.
	We're working to impart you, the public, with the information that you need to know so that you can be an informed consumer who protects your own health and your own safety by choosing products that are cleaner of heavy metals and avoiding products that are more contaminated with heavy metals.
	And, frankly, just to wrap this up, I shouldn't have to do this job.
	This should be done by the FDA, in my opinion.
	This should be done by these companies.
	They shouldn't be selling these products, in my opinion.
	I think it's irresponsible for them to do so.
	But because they're not doing the job and the FDA is not doing the job, well, It's up to clean food movement advocates like myself to do the job.
	We've been blessed with a lot of financial support from readers like you and we've invested that money in this laboratory so that we can do this important work.
	And this is having a huge positive impact, by the way.
	The industry is changing because of this work and because of the reports we're putting out.
	Companies are cleaning up their products.
	It's already happening in rice protein in a huge way.
	And I think it's going to happen here with ginkgo too.
	In fact, I think that the market for herbal products grown in China is going to all but disappear.
	Unless they can find some way to get the lead out, I don't think anybody's going to buy these products for very long because now that we have this lab and perhaps others have plans to set up similar labs, you know, you can't hide what's in your product.
	Transparency is the name of the game.
	Just like everybody wants to know whether they're eating GMOs or they want to know if there's pesticides in their product or BPA or hormones in the case of milk and dairy products, people want to know if there's lead in there too.
	They want to know if they're eating mercury or tungsten or arsenic or cadmium.
	People don't want to eat toxins.
	That's what the clean food movement is all about.
	And we're strong advocates of the clean food movement.
	So thanks for watching.
	Share this video with everyone you know.
	Be well informed.
	Do your research on products before you buy them.
	And share this video.
	My name is Mike Adams, The Health Ranger.
	Check out our laboratory results at labs.naturalnews.com My name is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
	I've been called the Ralph Nader of the Natural Health Movement.
	I'm a gardener, an animal caretaker, a food research scientist, and a leading activist of the Clean Food Movement.
	Every day, as the editor of Natural News, I fight for your right to know what you're eating.
	I go head-to-head with powerful corporations, exposing truths they don't want you to know, and negotiating industry-wide agreements for safer, cleaner food.
	I cover the stories the mainstream media won't touch, and I can't be fired because I only answer to you, not corporate bosses.
	With your help, we effect real, lasting change for a better world.
	A world that respects nature, life, liberty, and love for all conscious beings.

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