How can you be sure that an internal chinese herbal medicine has no pesticide in it?

At some point in your kung fu practice, you will be required to take an internal dit da jow or pills. However, may plants are sprayed with insecticide thes days. So how can you be sure that your internal dit da jow or pills has no pesticide in it? Thank you for any advice that you can give me regarding this topic.

I dunno. I think DDT is legal and sprayed regularly in China - is it? Anyone know?

The logical answer would be this:

Do some research yourself. Ask the people who gave it to you. I'm pretty sure that you won't find an answer here like "if it has purple spots then it has pesticide." You have to do the research for yourself.

There are sites that list pesticide residues for food products but I have not come across any for herbal remedies. One site I saw on food stated that 11 of 13 brands of Chinese Jasmine Tea contained high levels of pesticide. Anecdotally, pesticide appears to be used in large scale Chinese agriculture but in terms of medicine I don't if anyone has tested specific ingredients. Companies with pharmaceutical accreditation should be able to control the level of residue in their products.

phantom,

I don't have much time to write right now so this will be short.

In the US there are several companies you can buy your herbs from where the quality is significantly better than your average Chinese herbal pharmacy. "Organic" standards do not exist in China, yet. In general, our largest concerns within the medical field when talking about raw/dried herbs has been two fold: one, sulfered vs unsulfered, and two, real herb versus common substitute. I haven't heard of any concerns about pesticides but I'll check around about that for you (and me).

The two companies whose herbs I can HIGHLY recommend as having quality much better (safer, cleaner, etc.) than your average herbal shop are Spring Wind Herbs and Mayway Herb Co. Both of these companies only sell to liscenced practitioners but they should be able to refer you to someone who carries their products in your area.

Hope the info helps.

Justin