Nearly Half the Packet Tea in Your Everyday Cup Just Failed Its Safety Tests

Much of the crushed, torn, and curled granule behind India's everyday tea bags and builders' tea is Assam CTC, moving to market through auction centres such as Guwahati. The Tea Board of India does not break its safety testing out by growing region, so no failure rate specific to Assam exists in the data. But of 1,764 packaged tea samples the Board tested nationally in 2025-26, 835 failed, nearly half, mostly on pesticide residue and unapproved chemicals, an RTI response shows.

Industry sources cited in the reporting point to a practice compounding the problem: some packers blend CTC tea with lower-grade leaf and dust to cut cost, which this office notes is a labelling problem as much as a safety one. A grade on a packet is a claim about what is actually inside it, and blending in cheaper leaf without saying so breaks that claim before the cup is ever poured.

The rate has barely moved from the year before, when 711 of 1,423 samples failed. Two pesticides, imidacloprid and acetamiprid, account for a large share of the failures. The government has agreed in principle to revise the maximum residue limits set for them; the fix under discussion is to raise the line, not lower the residue, and the final notification has not been issued.

Asked which brands failed, the Tea Board declined, citing an RTI Act exemption for information relating to third parties. Asked what action followed a failed test, it said only that action had been taken "as per extant rules of the Control Orders," without naming a case or a penalty. Two questions asked, two non-answers certified as such.

Sources: Assam Tribune, 835 of 1,764 tea samples fail safety tests in 2025-26; tea board withholds brand names; The420.in, Tea Board RTI Reveals High Failure Rate In Packaged Tea Samples.