How to tell if Epichlorohydrin is in your tea?

Since I've found a lot of interesting information about epichlorohydrin I had to see if there was a way of finding out if a tea really did contain epichlorohydrin. From what I researched epichlorohydrin when it interacts with water turns into 3-MCPD but that does not really tell us what it looks like or anything like that. So I asked a fellow friend who's studying to become a biochemist and he told me that when 3-MCPD if formed it appears as a oil on the top of the water.

So I decided to try an experiment to see if that was the case so I went to the store and picked up a small box of Lipton tea since it is on our list of tea's which contain epichlorohydrin. So I boiled some water in my kettle and put a tea bag into a cup. When the water was boiled I poured it into the cup and I did not notice anything at first and I put some milk into it because I was going to end up just drinking it thinking that there was nothing wrong with the Lipton tea bag. As I poured the milk into the cup that is when I noticed the small layer of oil on top of the tea. I took a piece of cotton which absorbed the oil on top of the tea but decided against drinking the tea because I value my health.

So this is a way to test tea if you have tea at home you can actually figure out whether it has epichlorohydrin in it by looking to see if you see oil on top of the tea. If no oil is there then chances are the tea bag does not contain epichlorohydrin to seal the bag. And if you do that means the bag uses epichlorohydrin or a polyamine-epichlorohydrin resin.

Ultimately I think if your really concerned with your health it is best to avoid drinking tea which uses tea bags to begin with. Tea made just from leaves contains more flavor and aroma and there is no worrying about some kind of poison glue or chemical used in either the bag creation or the bag sealing.

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List of Epichlorohydrin Free Tea Products

After finding the information about the cancer causing chemical epichlorohydrin bonding agent I had to look to see if I could find out if there were any tea companies which bagged there tea without the harmful products. Some of the responses from tea companies where very contradictory they claimed their product does not contain epichlorohydrin and when questioned further then claimed that there paper manufacture uses epichlorohydrin based resin but it's still within safe levels.

Of course avoiding using tea which is contained in bags is one way or buying a tea kettle which has a porcelain filter for leaves also works but some people might not like the fact that it is not as easily to drink it or store it on you while your on the move. So I've been emailing different companies trying to find out which do and which do not. And because some of these companies are slow to respond it might be a long process of modifying the list and adding more to it as I find them. But for the time being I do have some which I can list.

Tea companies which did not provide enough information to prove they don't actually use the chemical:

• Numi tea response:
  Hello,
  Not containing the material of concern.
  Best,
  The Numi Tea’m

So far this is the only information Numi provided so I do not know if they are just trying to avoid answering it or the person answering emails does not know english but regardless of the case I will not add it to the list if there is not enough proof.

Tea companies that contain polyamine-epichlorohydrin resins:

• Bigelow Tea company claims that they do not use epichlorohydrin in there tea but they say there paper manufacture uses resin which contains epichlorohydrin at safe levels.
• Yogi tea currently uses a non-heat sealable filtration paper made from a select blend of high quality manila hemp (abaca) fibers and wood pulp. This paper is oxygen bleached using a natural process free of chemicals or toxins. With regard to your question, our tea bag filter paper does contain epichlorohydrin. This is a resin approved by the FDA for use in food contact materials to provide wet strength.

 Tea companies that contain epichlorohydrin:

• Lipton Tea

 Tea companies which do not have epichlorohydrin:

• Twinings uses a thin layer of polypropylene plastic to seal the tea bags. 

 

 

Companies which have not responded yet:
Ahmad tea
Salada tea
Tazo tea
Celestial Seasonings
Harney & Sons Fine Teas 
Girnar tea
Stash tea

These are most of the tea's of which I see on a daily basis so if I missed one which you'd like me to try and contact and find out whether they use epichlorohydrin in the bagging process feel free to comment and tell me.