Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: Stanford University

Title of entry: "The Spice Sellers' Secret" by Kris Newby

About this entry: This medical mystery follows Jenna Forsyth, a young environmental scientist at Stanford, as she hunts for the source of lead poisoning in pregnant women and children in rural Bangladesh. Between 24 million and 46 million children in Bangladesh have lead levels above the recommended threshold, the fourth highest number in this age group behind India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Lead poisoning has lifelong effects on the cognitive abilities of children, and the social and economic impacts on a country can be devastating. Using old-fashioned detective work and a novel method for identifying lead sources in blood, Forsyth and a team of Stanford scientists traced the lead poisoning to spice sellers who were mixing turmeric with yellow lead-chromate pigment to boost sales.

Using these findings, Bangladeshi officials worked with the team to launch an educational campaign and market sting operation to discourage this practice. As a result of this intervention, the incidence of adulterated spice plunged from 47% in September 2019 to no detectable lead in 2021, and blood-borne lead levels in study subjects dropped by 30%.

Goals:
To show Stanford Medicine’s leadership in solving health problems and to educate health officials worldwide on the prevalence of lead-tainted turmeric and to introduce them to the method of “fingerprinting” isotopes in blood to trace heavy metals back to environmental sources. The method is effective, relatively inexpensive and easy to implement around the globe.
The article spurred media coverage and reached a wide online audience. More detail in “Additional Information.”