I found this article on the Consumer Council site suggested
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Test clears concerns over heavy metals and pesticide residues in tea
Tea lovers can set their heart at ease.
A Consumer Council test has given 75 samples of tea leaves and tea bags a clean bill of health to drink.
By and large, according to the test, the tea we drink is safe from contamination of heavy metals and pesticides.
The report reassures consumers who drink tea habitually,that the chances of their exceeding the safety level (stipulated in the Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake set by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives) of lead from tea consumption are slim.
That is unless you happen to consume an incredibly huge quantity of tea - say 16 litres - every day and that the tea happens to contain the highest amount of leachable lead of 0.016 ppm as detected in some samples of the test (assuming that other food and drinks contain no lead).
Besides lead, the test detected only low level of leachable arsenic, cadmium and aluminium in a few samples of tea, and mercury was not detected at all.
But if you have the rare habit of chewing tea leaves as some do. The advice is that you should not eat too much.
For the test showed that lead in comparatively higher quantity was detected in most samples of tea leaves and tea bags and arsenic was present in a quarter of the samples.
In fact, 2 samples had a lead level above 6 ppm and 1 other sample had a total arsenic level (both organic and inorganic) above 1.4ppm. The matter has been referred to the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department.
The Department followed up the case and had found that their 3 samples gave satisfactory results. Moreover, the arsenic limit in the Food Adulteration (Metallic Contamination) Regulations refers only to the amount of inorganic arsenic As2O3, and therefore the sample found to contain a total amount of 1.6 ppm of arsenic might not necessarily exceed the limit.
Only a small amount of pesticide residues of DDT and Dicofol was found in some of the samples. But none exceeded the safety limit set out in the Chinese Tea Hygiene Standard GB 9679, EU and Codex standards.