Here is todays devils panties and wow. Been knocking it out of the park this week to me. Although not really the take here it makes me think about mercury in fish. As a doomer I actually feel that even if global warming was taken away by a genie wish and we 100% did not add carbon going forward we are in real trouble because of pollution. In our planet and in our products. I mean it seems when people talk about the rise of civilization they talk about agriculture growing staple crops, but fishing to me is even larger in importance for civilization. Its been our staple protein for most of history. Then of course we have the use of pesticides causing the increase in arsenic in our staples to. ugh.
It started with a bunch of kids getting lead poisoning from applesauce pouches. They then traced that back to how most spices are sourced from poor countries using basically slave labor. So, these people are both not the most careful in preventing contamination, but those paid by weight of spices are almost incentivised to cut the spice with a heavy metal or something to get more $/per lbs. for example.
Edit A good amount of chocolate and other delicious things, in the US at least, also have a "totally safe" amount of heavy metals.
At least some pre-ground pepper is cut with wood shavings or other such. buy a mill and peppercorns.