ABSTRACT
Among the green tea catechin products currently available in the global market, most of the purified extracts are made by extracting tea leaves with hot water and then with a solvent, followed by column chromatography to elute concentrated or purified polyphenols. With subsequent concentration or pulverization of filtrate, highly concentrated or purified tea polyphenols can be made. us, refined polyphenols such as 90% epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), which is the major catechin, can be manufactured. Currently, a large fraction of commercial green tea extracts sold worldwide is produced in the developing world, where federal regulations on pesticide use are seldom followed. erefore, most of the green tea extract products available in the worldwide marketplace are not pesticide-free and probably contaminated with some poisonous pesticides, such as endosulfan and dicofol, that are well known for their endocrine disruptive features and related deleterious effects. In the United States, actually a limited fraction of imported green tea extracts are randomly analyzed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), leaving tons of defective and tainted green tea extract in the market for diverse applications yielding the worst scenarios. On the other hand, although sometimes the green tea extract is labeled as clean from pesticides, the analysis showed contamination with benzopyrene, a hazardous and carcinogenic
hydrocarbon that might be used during the extraction process or caused by polluted/contaminated soil used for the tea plantations. Worldwide, the use of various pesticides in the cultivation of green tea is internationally regulated, and their residues are allowed in final botanical extracts (USFDA, 2011).
