Tea leaves also remove lead and other heavy metals, according to one study. So there’s another reason to sip

A new study says brewing tea has benefits besides its well-known anti-inflammatory properties and mood-boosting powers. Good news for tea-drinkers: properly-brewed tea may also filter heavy metals like lead and cadmium out of the liquid.

The research was published last week in the journal ACS Food Science & Technology under the title “Brewing Clean Water: The Metal-Remediating Benefits of Tea Preparation. ”

“We’re not advocating that everyone start using tea leaves as a water filter, ” Northwestern researcher and senior author Vinayak P. Dravid said in a press release. “To study and understand the scientific concepts and phenomena involved in the capture/release cycles of contaminants, we often use model experiments and adjust a number of parameters.

“When tea is brewed, heavy metals are adsorbed (that is, the ions or molecules stick to the surface of another molecule to form a film on it) onto the tea leaves’ surface, and they remain there, ” the study says.

For this study, we wanted to quantify the ability of tea to adsorb heavy metals. By quantifying this effect, our work shows the underappreciated potential for tea consumption to passively contribute to reduced levels of heavy metal exposure for populations around the world, ” Dravid said.

Even though the researchers did not test for health benefits, the possibility of removing lead has important implications for public health research.

“If everyone drinks one more cup of tea a day, we might eventually see declines in illnesses that are closely correlated with exposure to heavy metals, ” he said. “Alternatively, it might help explain why populations with higher tea consumption may have lower incidence rates of stroke and heart disease than populations with lower tea consumption.