Food Contaminants in Tea Products from Kratom Leaves
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-94-6463-112-8_23How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- food contaminant; red kratom; white kratom; green kratom
- Abstract
One of the plants that has been used for generations in Borneo is kratom or Mitragyna speciosa. The leaves are used as analgesics and antidepressants. The plant is grown for export to countries other than Indonesia where consumption of this plant as a beverage is still legal, generally in tea from leaves brewed with hot water or tea bags. Some researches found that tea products from kratom leaves contained potentially dangerous levels of toxic metals and microbes. This study aims to examine the food contaminants in tea products from three types of kratom tea leaves used by the people of Borneo: Red, white, and green kratom variants.Bacterial colony tests for red kratom samples produced 2.9 x 10–3 colony forming unit (CFU)/gram. In comparison, white kratom samples produced 9.9 x 10–3 CFU/gram and green kratom samples produced 2.9 x 10–3 CFU/ gram. White kratom samples produced the highest CFU compared to red and green samples. Red kratom samples produced an uncountable number of yeasts at 10–2 and 10–3 dilution, while at 10–4 dilution, it produced a total of 4.8 x 10–5 CFU/gram. White kratom samples produced 3.04 x 10–4 CFU/gram and green kratom samples produced 1.7 x 10–4 CFU/gram. Red kratom samples produced the highest number among the three samples, while green kratom produced the lowest number. Identification with other specific media, namely Eosin Methylene Blue Agar (EMBA) and Salmonella-Shigella Agar (SSA), produced negative results for all samples. The red samples produced the highest of 6.6% b/b sample compared to 6.1% of white and 5.2% of green samples. All samples produced a positive qualitative test of mitragynine alkaloid. White kratom samples showed the highest Cd and Cu contamination, green kratom samples showed the highest Pb contamination and red samples showed the highest Hg contamination. Before preclinical and human clinical trial, it is advised to sterilize herbal simplicias of kratom as they tend to induce bacterial and fungal colonization. In some countries where kratom beverages are still legal, before the leaves were prepared for sale as tea it is better to make a ready-to-drink hygiene product and develop a set of “Good Manufacturing Pratices (GMP)” for the kratom industry before exporting it abroad to avoid microbes and heavy metal contaminations.
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Reza Y. Purwoko AU - Syahrul Tuba AU - Sri Idaiani AU - Harimat Hendarwan AU - Islamudin Ahmad AU - Harryadin Mahardika AU - Kevin Tandarto AU - Caroline Oktarina AU - Reganedgary Jonlean PY - 2023 DA - 2023/03/01 TI - Food Contaminants in Tea Products from Kratom Leaves BT - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference for Health Research – BRIN (ICHR 2022) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 231 EP - 239 SN - 2468-5739 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-112-8_23 DO - 10.2991/978-94-6463-112-8_23 ID - Purwoko2023 ER -