Pollution, risk and containment of harmful elements in the best-selling tea sold online

To study the level of harmful elements (HEs) contamination in best-selling tea sold online (BSTSO), we purchased 60 samples covering six types of tea. We then evaluated the associated health risks for three major groups of tea drinkers. The contents of six HEs in the tea samples were analyzed via inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. The recovery, limit of detection and quantification all complied with the national standard (GB 5009.268—2016). The average levels of cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), arsenic (As) and mercury (Hg) in BSTSO were lower than the standards (NY/T 288—2018, GB2762—2022, and NY659—2003). The pollution indices of As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, and Pb, and the Nemerow synthetic pollution index were within the ranges of 0.05 ~ 0.32, 0.10 ~ 0.67, 0.03 ~ 0.54, 0.24 ~ 0.68, 0 ~ 0.04, 0.01 ~ 0.37, 0.18 ~ 0.57, indicating medium to heavy pollution. Although the six HEs in the tea posed no noncarcinogenic risk to the three subpopulations, the carcinogenic risk was approximately six times higher than the acceptable upper limit (1.0E-4) for the human body. Overall, the supervision of the cultivation, production, packaging, logistics, and sales of BSTSO should be strengthened, and the health risks of HEs in the BSTSO to tea drinkers should be reduced or eliminated.