A California biologist finds toxic metals in kale, gets slammed for it on the Internet, and then finds evidence that this metal could be even more dangerous than he had thought.
By TODD OPPENHEIMER
Ernie Hubbard, a cell biologist, spent months following a bizarre trail to figure out how a toxic metal could be showing up so heavily in kale. His vegetable sampling was done in his home laboratory, which he set up in the kitchen of his California houseboat.
EDITOR’S NOTE: By traditional standards, food and farming are odd topics for a magazine about craftsmanship. So before you read this update to “The Vegetable Detective,” a controversial story that appeared in our Summer issue, it might be worth explaining why we’re giving these subjects such attention.
If Craftsmanship is about perfection; if it’s about careful thinking, and making things that matter that are built to last, then few subjects deserve the rubric of craftsmanship more than our system of food production. As the great agrarian philosopher Wendell Berry once put it, “a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.” In today’s world—where crops are beset by climate change on one front and assaults from chemicals and other industrial detritus on the other—a farmer’s efforts at craftsmanship are more challenging than ever. This is why we devoted our entire first issue to a collection of pioneers in sustainable agriculture. And it’s why we’re now following a scientist who has found evidence that some of today’s most popular vegetables might, in certain circumstances, be toxic. (You can find our first issue here, and further commentary about our coverage of agriculture here.)
We hope you find the update that follows useful.
“This little lab was hummin’ for about four months, day and night!” he says.
In the weeks since “The Vegetable Detective” was published, on July 8, it has provoked a variety of reactions—from numerous readers and, in particular, from the media. The article profiled a California biologist who had found indications that the “cruciferous” family of vegetables, possibly kale most of all, contained an unusually high amount of a toxic metal called thallium. And this metal might be causing a range of vague but increasingly common ailments—such as chronic fatigue, foggy thinking, heart arrhythmias, and, in extreme cases, hair loss and difficulty walking. Hubbard’s claims have now been reported—with either praise or condemnation—by at least two dozen media outlets, which range from new online sites to old, mainstream publications.
The first media response, from Mother Jones magazine on July 11th [chk], took Hubbard’s findings quite seriously. After doing his own literature review, Tom Philpott, the magazine’s food and agriculture correspondent, found enough evidence to warn readers against falling for the kale craze, especially in daily juices. This does not mean, Philpott added, that people should avoid kale and other crucifers altogether. “In all great things—wine, butter, ice cream, even kale—moderation makes sense,” Philpott concluded. And we would agree. Indeed, the people who came to Hubbard with problems all consumed crucifers in unusually quantities, sometimes daily.
As is frequently the case, the media got hungry for a contrary story line. The first to find one was Vox Media, which published an aggressive commentary on July 20th under the following title: “The viral idea that kale is bad for you is based on incredibly bad science.”
For a week or so, this assessment from Philpott, a respected food writer, spawned similar takes from publications as varied as Fast Company, Salon, Women’s Health, and Harper’s Bazaar. Then, as is frequently the case, the media got hungry for a contrary story line. The first to find one was Vox Media, which published an aggressive commentary on July 20th under the following title: “The viral idea that kale is bad for you is based on incredibly bad science.” Vox argued that there was no peer-reviewed research backing the links Hubbard was making between kale and thallium toxicity; that Hubbard had “shopped around for lab results that would tell him what he wanted to hear,” eventually choosing a questionable laboratory that had been repeatedly challenged by lawsuits; and that “he is not a scientist.”
By this time, the Internet was buzzing with fears that America’s latest health fad might be in trouble. And no one wanted that. Soon, a disparate collection of bloggers and websites attracted to food, health, truth, or controversy had picked up the Vox story, and were gleefully putting their own spin on the idea that all this talk about toxics in kale was based on crackpot science. Perhaps most curiously, before Vox and most others published their critiques of Hubbard’s work, none of them bothered to contact him to check the facts for themselves.
When an issue provokes such extreme reactions from both sides, there is a good chance that all of the combatants have at least some truth on their side. That certainly seems to be the case when it comes to heavy metals in kale.
This fact inspired Hubbard to launch an attack of his own. He began by firing off a 13-page rebuttal to the Vox story, which, among other things, listed his 30-plus years of scientific credentials, and explained why he changed testing laboratories. (Apparently, judging from Hubbard’s laboratory reports, both of the labs he used reported the same measurements of thallium. So “shopping” for one over the other regarding thallium would have been meaningless. He chose the second laboratory, Doctors Data, because it could also test for other metals, and its services were less expensive.) While Hubbard did not discuss the controversy surrounding Doctors Data, it should be pointed out that the lawsuits and other complaints against this laboratory involve how its data sometimes has been presented, which we will discuss further in a moment. None of these complaints questioned the numerical accuracy of the laboratory’s tests. Those tests have been used by a number of highly regarded doctors and were the basis of our reporting.
Hubbard concluded his rebuttal by asking Vox to retract or correct its story about him. After initially resisting Hubbard’s request, and then offering marginal changes, the editors eventually corrected their biggest factual errors. In the following weeks, Hubbard sent similar messages to a dozen other media outlets that were repeating Vox’s assertions. Each of them made corrections, and two of them pulled their stories entirely.
When the numbers for heavy metals in kale started coming in, Hubbard was stunned. One really stood out: thallium, which for years was Saddam Hussein’s favorite poison.
When an issue provokes such extreme reactions from both sides, there is a good chance that all of the combatants have at least some truth on their side. That certainly seems to be the case when it comes to heavy metals in kale, its cruciferous cousins, and perhaps many other vegetables as well. So let’s take a moment to summarize what we’ve been able to learn about the science on this debate since “The Vegetable Detective” was published.
The first question obviously involves the quality of Hubbard’s science. Perhaps the simplest answer to this question was delivered by Joshua Nachman, a nutritionist at Johns Hopkins University’s Integrative Medicine and Digestive Center. Nachman had occasion to quiz Hubbard about his work, in response to a query from The Huffington Post. After several exchanges, Nachman came to the following conclusion: “What he has found is good science,” Nachman told me. “It is preliminary, and not yet ready to be extrapolated to the population at large. But the chemistry is chemistry. It’s all completely factual.”
With time, our internal organs will gradually excrete thallium, but the process is quite slow because of several tricks that thallium has up its sleeve. On its way out of the body, a lot of it pauses and kind of reverses course, getting re-absorbed through a process called entero-hepatic recirculation.
Now, exactly which facts are known at this point gets a little dicey. For starters, it should be remembered that ingesting trace amounts of heavy metals does not always pose a problem. Some, such as iron, manganese, and zinc, are necessary nutrients. Others, such as XX, XX, and XX, are easily excreted by the kidneys or the liver when they have accumulated in excess. But there are other metals, such as lead and mercury, that are neither innocent nor easily eliminated. And there is evidence that thallium might fall within that family.
The reason, according to range of journal articles collected by Hubbard and his colleague, Dr. Michael Rosenbaum (listed below), has to do with thallium’s unusual chemical powers. For some reason, the core of thallium atoms (specifically, their ionic radii) are exactly the same shape and size as potassium atoms. This enables the metals to essentially trick human cells into absorbing thallium instead of potassium; once lodged inside cell membranes, thallium binds with the sulfur in our cells, and hangs on for dear life. That’s when it starts to cause real trouble.
All this chemical trickery his has led Rosenbaum’s partner, Hubbard, to wax poetical about thallium—albeit from a more diabolical perspective. “It plays bait and switch with our cells,” he says. “It’s like a sumo wrestler that looks like a leprechaun.”
As a person’s internal organs try to continue functioning as usual, the thallium locks up several enzymes and vitamins crucial to energy production. (One is an enzyme called ATPase, which consumes up to 30 percent of the body’s energy.). In the meantime, thallium continues to rob cells of their normal quotient of potassium, a primary key to our energy levels. “I think I can conjecture that thallium has a strong impact on energy,” says Rosenbaum, whose specialty as a physician is biochemistry. “Mercury also binds to sulfur, but thallium is the only metal I know of that displaces potassium. It has a direct entry into cells. Other metals don’t. It disperses rapidly, and penetrates rapidly. And I don’t know if there’s anything in our system that can get it out.” This has led Rosenbaum’s partner, Hubbard, to wax poetical about thallium—albeit from a more diabolical perspective. “It plays bait and switch with our cells,” he says. “It’s like a sumo wrestler that looks like a leprechaun.”
From here, the science gets even more dicey. The human body may have difficulty naturally eliminating thallium, but there are some detoxification potions—called “chelating agents”—that can pull it out. As noted in our article, chelating agents have been extremely controversial, largely because the vast majority of them don’t work, or cause damage of their own. For this reason, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that only prescription chelating formulas be used, and only under the supervision of a knowledgeable doctor.
This combination of facts and theories led i
Thallium in our food supply is such a new issue, it is virtually unregulated. (The only exception is bottled water, where the FDA limits thallium to XXX.) However,…
After Hubbard and his partner, Dr. Michael Rosenbaum, checked the scientific literature, they noticed that thallium possesses some unusually damaging, and stealthy, characteristics.
[From here, story will go into where the thallium is coming from, which may still be a mystery. Still trying to nail down leads about what’s getting into fertilizers, esp. organic ones. Should have something before publication.
Story will wrap with a broader discussion about why vague toxicity issues seem to come up more often in the U.S. than in other advanced countries. (Answer, according to Nachman: more toxics are in our environment, because we have a “reactionary” regulatory system, whereas Europe, by comparison, has a more “precautionary” system, which makes companies prove safety more thoroughly before new products are introduced. I will likely check with others on this, as it seems a rather facile argument.
For further information about the research into thallium gathered by Hubbard and Dr. Rosenblum, click or tap here.
Todd Oppenheimer is founding editor and publisher of Craftsmanship Magazine.
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