Celestial Seasonings: High in pesticide

Tea drinkers—I’m not talking about sweet tea drinkers, but hot and herbal tea drinkers who avoid artificial sweeteners, sugars and the like—like to think they’re pretty healthy drinkers. I’m a tea drinker of both varieties; I totally put honey or sugar or stevia in my tea (whatever I’m in the mood for, really) and when I heat it up, I don’t even heat it properly. Still, I do like to know what’s in my food and to avoid nasty things when I can—nasty things like pesticides.

Unfortunately, I do drink a lot of Celestial Seasonings tea, and according to this new report, the tea contains dangerously high levels of pesticide—levels that even exceed the limits set by U.S. federal guidelines—limits that, I’m sure you’re aware, are already pretty darn high when compared with other nations’ guidelines. Even the children’s sleepytime grape tea has these levels.

This is incredibly disappointing. About half of the teas on my tea rack are Celestial Seasonings, and now I don’t even want to drink them. My favorite, Lemon Zinger, wasn’t on the list that tested positive, but who knows if it contains these levels or not? In fact, now that I’m pregnant, I’m wondering how much pesticide is in my body already. I know there are tons of sources it can come from and that there’s no way to protect yourself from so many chemicals these days—but dang it, shouldn’t there be? If we have an FDA and a USDA, shouldn’t they exist to keep us protected from crap like this with a sound screening process?

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia