[rikelmens]

1. The Water Test: Take a glass of warm water and add a teaspoon of your turmeric powder to it. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes. If the turmeric powder settles down, it is pure. If it doesn’t settle to the bottom and leaves a dark yellow colour, it is adulterated.

2. The Palm Test: Take a pinch of your turmeric powder and rub it into the palm of your hand for a few seconds, then turn your palm over. Pure turmeric will stick to your palm and leave a yellow stain, whereas adulterated turmeric will mostly fall off.

[hackerlight]

Where can I find a source for your first point? This site[1] mentions this test as a way to detect adulteration by artificial coloring in turmeric powder, not adulteration by lead.

[sowbug]

I think the point (at least the one I gathered from the article) is that turmeric is sometimes artificially colored to make it the right shade of yellow, and that lead is in the chemical often used for that coloring. Thus, evidence of artificial coloring is a heuristic for presence of lead.

I suppose your turmeric could fail the test, and you could decide that the failure is not a sufficient proof of lead presence, because it might be a different lead-free artificial coloring that caused the test failure. That is absolutely your right to decide.

[ed25519FUUU]

Wouldn’t lead contamination cause the turmeric to sink?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Lead Chromate, not Lead.

But apparently it's also not very soluble in water, so the question about sinking stands.

Possibly, a chemical powder is much finer than a ground-up plant matter, and takes longer to settle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_chromate#Safety_hazar...