I'm going to show
you how to cook
with this Afghan pressure cooker.
Get it nice and hot. I'm going
to melt a little butter in it. Go
with the plans. Get too big where
it looks up around the sides.
On YouTube there's no shortage of videos
with tips and tricks for cooking with
the traditional Afghan pressure cooker.
The ingenious cookers make a hot and
fast meal over a live fire and might
seem like a hungry campers best friend.
But these pots are among a range of
imported cookware that's drawing warnings
from public health investigators.
Warnings because of what has happened
to thousands of Afghan immigrants
who call the Seattle area home,
like Faisal Haq Safi and his family.
Mr. Safi, this is very nice.
This is beautiful.
I'm glad to meet you guys.
Welcome to my home.
He has prepared an elaborate
meal for us his guests,
as is the Afghan custom.
When it comes to the main course,
however, chicken and rice Mr.
Safi is using a shiny new stainless
steel Instant Pot instead of
the aluminum Afghan pressure
cooker he's used all his life.
A lot of Afghans still are using it.
Unfortunately, we don't know
anything about. Lead poisoning.
Lead poisoning. When he came
to the United States in 2021,
blood tests revealed higher
than normal lead levels in is
now 7 and 8 year old children.
We went to the public
health in downtown Seattle.
We tested our kids.
They did the blood test. Everything.
So they tested positive.
I was worried about it already.
I knew that something was
going on. Something was going
on in the Afghan community.
That was uncovered by the nonprofit
Afghan Health Initiative and King
County Public health scientists in 2018.
Blood test showed Afghans had
the highest lead levels of any
immigrant population. It's really,
really detrimental to the
development of children.
So there's a lot of developmental delays,
mental health issues, things like ADHD.
And so we had determined that
there was a huge amount of let
in these traditional cookware
the the Fabricate the Masoon.
Health officials believe the Afghan
manufacturer uses lead filled scrap metal,
even old car engines to forge pressure
cookers marketed as aluminum.
But convincing families to
swap them out isn't easy,
and it's a very slow process
because it's something so
near and dear to the culture,
as well as something that's very,
very common in our families.
Meantime, the use of the cookers has
expanded beyond the Afghan community.
King County health officials have been
unable to persuade the government and
online retailers to halt their sale.
It's easy to get your hands
on one of these cookers. We got
this one with just a few clicks.
We ordered 2 pressure cookers from the
biggest online marketplace, Amazon,
and a third from the website Etsy. This
is the pot we got off Amazon
from men grills. So why don't we
start with this one right here?
We took our three pots to King County's
environmental scientist. Katie Fellows,
I work for the Department of
Public Health with the Hazardous
Waste Management Program.
So we have a device called an X-ray
fluorescence analyzer or XRF analyzer.
Cookware is supposed to be lead free.
Any lead is too much lead.
Her analyzer reveals this about
the lead level in the first pot.
34K means 34,000 parts per million lead.
That is a very large amount of lead.
OK, so this one's not good.
No, that one contains lead.
This would make somebody
sick potentially, yes.
And the second pot,
36,000 parts per million, it's 36,000.
It's that last one on the
bottom. See PB for lead.
And the final cooker,
what number did you get here?
We got 33,033 thousand parts
per million, correct? The
results don't surprise fellows,
because over the years she's tested nearly
100 imported aluminum pots and pans.
Indian cookware, like most of
the cookware you're actually
holding, is made of hindalium.
Almost all have contained high lead levels.
King County's Hazardous Waste
Management program said further
testing showed lead that leached
into food from the cookware exceeded
FDA limits by almost 900 fold,
according to letters the health
department sent to Amazon and
Etsy's corporate offices.
Fellows recommends you avoid
aluminum cookware. What
should people buy?
What should they be looking for?
Purchase stainless steel cookware.
As far as we know and all the stainless
steel cookware that we have tested,
it should not contain leads.
Very delicious.
Mr. Safi got his stainless steel
cooker through a health department
program for Afghan families,
along with news that his children's
lead poisoning was caught in time.
And they will suffer no ill effects.
I am so worried, and I'm glad
that I participated through
the Afghan Health Initiative.
Etsy did not respond to us for this
story and in an e-mail and Amazon
spokesperson said safety is a top priority
and that the products in question are
no longer available on their website.
But this pot that we bought,
the other one we bought on Amazon and the
Etsy pot are all still available for sale,
So it seems that Amazon removed.
Only a few specific items
that King County identified,
but not all of them.
And also last month the FDA put a import
alert on Rashka Baba pressure cookers,
the biggest manufacturer,
which King County says is a good start.
But it's really not going far enough because
these things are obviously still out there.
You had mentioned or made reference in
your story of other types of aluminum
cookware that were also dangerous.
Yeah, that's right.
Hindalium is one of them.
It's an aluminum alloy from India that
King County is tested high in lead.
So King County wants the federal
government to take additional steps with
aluminum cookware like it does already
to monitor lead levels in ceramics.
More than just an import alert,
the FDA has tests and standards
and rules for ceramic wear that
aluminum cookware doesn't have.
Also, guys, it's worth saying this again.
Stainless steel appears to
be the safe way to go.
And can understand why it's so hard
to get these out of homes when
it's so much part of a culture. So
getting really isn't a great little cookers.
It's so sad. But don't don't use it.