jack p/ Originally posted in Diverticulosis: When Our Most Common Gut Disorder Hardly Existed
Answer:
A new Care2 post has surfaced about thallium poisoning and kale. A great article in VOX lays out the background. The claims that kale has high loads of thallium stem from this 2006 study, where kale was grown in soil contaminated with thallium. Apparently the author of this study was asked about its findings and he responded to the author of the VOX article stating “To get even close to toxic levels, you’d need to plant the kale in soils with high levels of the heavy metal. (Most soils only have very low levels of thallium, he told me.) Then they’d need to accumulate a lot of it in their leaves — which doesn’t always happen. Thallium is differently bound in different soils and therefore from different soils with the same thallium content, different availability of thallium was reported”
Furthermore, one of our site users, Darryl, always finds great studies on various topics. His comment and study links on heavy metals in soils from different countries have been super helpful!
Now, someone can eat too much raw kale due to goitrogenic compounds, but cooked doesn’t seem to be a problem. Find out how many cups of kale may be too much?
It does seem that the cruciferous vegetable family is better at accumulating thallium than other vegetables, as evident by this paper and others. However, to say that all soil is contaminated and we must worry about thallium poisoning before eating our kale and cabbage seems far fetched.
Image Credit:Media Mike Hazard/ flicker
