California Proposition 65
This notice applies to orders shipped to California. The warning below is required by California state law and appears on shipments to that state.
WARNING:
Consuming this product can expose you to lead, which is known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov/food.
Why this warning appears
California's Proposition 65, formally known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, requires businesses to warn California consumers before exposing them to any of the chemicals the state has listed as causing cancer or reproductive harm. Lead is on that list.
Lead is naturally present in the soil where tea plants grow, and is absorbed by the plant as it develops. This occurs in every tea-growing region worldwide, including within California itself. Lead is also released into the atmosphere from historical industrial and vehicular sources, and travels globally before settling into soil.
The Prop 65 threshold for lead is 0.5 micrograms per day — a level so conservative that many everyday foods, including potatoes, lettuce, wheat, and carrots, would also require a warning if sold in California.
Because it is not scientifically possible to distinguish between naturally-occurring lead and industrially-sourced lead in tea leaves, we include this warning on all matcha shipments to California in the interest of full transparency.
What our testing shows
Our matcha is submitted through Eurofins Food Testing Japan and analysed at Eurofins WEJ Contaminants GmbH in Hamburg, Germany — an ISO 17025 accredited laboratory. Here is what a single 2 g bowl contains, measured against California's daily threshold of 0.5 micrograms.
Saemidori = STARTER · Maru = STANDARD · Nomu = CEREMONIAL GRADE
| Product | Lead per kg | Lead per bowl |
|---|---|---|
| Saemidori | 34 µg | 0.07 µg |
| Maru | 87 µg | 0.17 µg |
| Nomu | 76 µg | 0.15 µg |
A single bowl falls under California's 0.5 microgram threshold. Two or three bowls a day may not. Because we cannot know how much any individual will drink, we provide the warning on every shipment to California rather than make assumptions on our customers' behalf.
For full details on all the metals we test for, please see our Heavy Metal Testing page.
About Proposition 65 warnings
A Proposition 65 warning does not mean that a product violates any federal safety standard or is unsafe. It means the product contains a listed chemical at a level above California's exposure threshold — a threshold set deliberately low. For chemicals listed as reproductive toxicants, including lead, the state sets it at one one-thousandth of the level at which no effect was observed.
For more information about Proposition 65, please visit www.p65warnings.ca.gov.