Do Ayurvedic medicines cure or cause harm? That’s the question raised by a study showing that 21 per cent of 193 traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicines bought on the internet from US or Indian sources contained high amounts of lead, mercury or arsenic.
One sample of a preparation called Ekangvir Ras had 26,000 parts per million of lead. This compares with a US legal limit of 2 ppm in pharmaceutically produced calcium tablets for the elderly.
In a subset of preparations called Rasa Shastra medicines, minerals with heavy metals are deliberately added. “Ayurvedic practitioners think that if these are mixed…
