Beware of lead in traditional Chinese Medicine

Children's blood lead, which exceeds the standard, often occurs around smelters, battery plants, thermal power plants or mines, and becomes a typical accident of environmental pollution damage to health The content of lead in traditional Chinese medicine can not be ignored According to the statistics of Chinese journals from 1981 to 2009, only journal records, there were 1082 cases of lead poisoning caused by taking traditional Chinese medicine in China from 1981 to 2009, 88.5% of them were cases, and many of them were caused by misfaith in folk prescriptions More than 30 countries use CDC standard lead to great harm to human body The total amount of lead in normal human body is 0.1-0.2g, the toxic amount is about 0.4g, the lethal amount is 20g, and the lethal amount of lead compound is 50g If you take 10 mg of lead from Chinese medicine containing lead every day in one week, or 1 mg of lead every day in a few months, you can cause poisoning In 1985, the standard of American CDC was: blood lead ≥ 250ug / L However, later studies suggested that when the blood lead was 100-250ug / L, it could have adverse effects on children's intelligence and growth and development, and when the blood lead was less than 250ug / L, there were more false negatives in the determination of EP In 1991, American CDC established a new standard: blood lead ≥ 100ug / L (0.483umol / L) At present, more than 30 countries in the world have taken the 1991 American CDC standard as the diagnostic standard of lead poisoning in children A U.S study showed that IQ in children with blood lead concentration lower than 10 UG / dl decreased with the increase of blood lead level In the blood lead test of 276 children aged 6 months, the IQ related to 10ug / dl decreased by 11.1 on average with the increase of blood lead level; when it exceeded 10ug / dl, the IQ continued to decline, and the IQ of children decreased by about 5.5 with the increase of 10ug / dl Plumbum is the main raw material of traditional Chinese medicine "Chinese Pharmacopoeia" in 2005 edition, which added the method of determining heavy metals and harmful elements by atomic absorption or inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry Among them, American ginseng, white peony, liquorice, Salvia miltiorrhiza, honeysuckle, astragalus, etc are the varieties determined by the above methods, and for the first time, it is stipulated that the heavy metal lead (PB) in the above herbs is less than or equal to 5.0mg/kg, compared with 0.2mg/kg for pollution-free vegetables, 2.0mg/kg for tea (3.0mg/kg for pressed tea) and 0.5mg/kg for health (functional) food, etc., they are much stricter In addition to cadmium and chromium, lead, mercury and arsenic have a long history of application in traditional Chinese medicine The earliest Chinese pharmaceutical monograph "Shennong materia medica classic" has records of lead-in and lead powder treatment Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica collected 5 kinds of lead drugs, including metal lead, lead powder, lead cream, lead lead lead and Mitsuo Lead pills and Mithras are still widely used in the field of modern Chinese medicine If it is used properly, it tends to stand up and sink, so the national pharmacopoeia has not deleted it even though it is toxic There are black tin, two black tin and so on, the content of lead is as high as 15% Among them, plumbum is the main raw material for making plaster in traditional Chinese medicine In addition to many ointment containing lead, folk prescription "Zhangdan", "Zhuanyindan", "Paidu capsule" and "shengdivergent" contain lead, some of which are extremely high In particular, it should be noted that the magazine has reported cases of lead poisoning caused by the use of red elixir powder or prickly heat powder According to the test, the lead content of red elixir powder is up to 270 μ g / g, while that of prickly heat powder is 70 μ g / g Attention should be paid to the content of lead in nourishing traditional Chinese medicine In 2008, a statistic of 312 kinds of traditional Chinese medicine showed that the average value of lead was 2.66 mg / kg, the over standard rate was 12.1%, and the content of keel herbs was high, the highest value could reach 80 mg / kg The lead content of 24 kinds of common Chinese medicinal materials in Anhui Province was determined, among which 3 samples exceeded the standard The results showed that the content of lead was related to its medicinal parts: leaf, bark, flower, root and seed Another study showed that cassia seed, lotus leaf, medlar, Platycodon grandiflorum and dandelion, which are often regarded as the same source of medicine and food, all contain a certain amount of lead and cadmium The content of lead in dandelion is the highest, and the content of lead, mercury and cadmium in six kinds of tonic traditional Chinese medicine has been determined The content of lead in dandelion is between 0.53-2.43g/kg Some Chinese herbal medicines, such as hawthorn, yam, lily, wolfberry, Ophiopogon japonicus and lotus seed, which are used for a long time, should be paid more attention to Some families supplement pregnant women with medicated meals Lactation is the main source of bioaccumulative pollutants Lead in human milk accounts for 40% - 65% of blood lead level 72 human milk samples were measured, the average value of lead was 7.68 ± 8.24 μ g / L, in which the content of lead in the milk of the people who ate traditional Chinese medicine was 8.59 ± 10.95 μ g / L, and that of the people who did not eat traditional Chinese medicine was 6.84 ± 2.68 μ g / L.