The aroma of Taiwanese "high-mountain" oolong tea is incomparable, but those seeking high-elevation teas that are fragrant and smooth often overlook the problem of residual pesticides.

While competition teas and teas seeking place-of-origin certification must undergo testing for residual pesticides, the majority of tealeaves on the market are subject only to testing of random samples by the Council of Agriculture's (COA) tea-sampling team.

The last three years have seen a shocking rise in the percentage of samples re-jected for their residual pesticide content: from 3.86% to 9.05% to 11.14%.

Jackson Huang, a former chairman of the Taiwan Tea Manufacturers' Association (TTMA) who is known as a "living dictionary of tea," notes that the old saying about sugar in the South and tea in the North refers to Taiwan's important early exports: black and green tea from the Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Miaoli areas and sugar cane from southern Taiwan. In those days, only facilities licensed by the Department of Agriculture and Forestry (the predecessor of today's Agriculture and Food Agency) were permitted to manufacture tea, which resulted in stringent health controls and orderly sales. When the Taiwanese tea industry was at its peak in the 1970s, the TTMA had 375 members.

With the government's 1982 move to relax regulations and "return tea to the growers," tea growers were permitted to process and sell tea themselves, bringing cultivation, manufacturing, and sales all under one roof. The number of small producers skyrocketed to more than 8,000, while the number of large producers fell to just 62.

Huang says that problems abound because growers who manufacture tea are not subject to the same kind of hygiene inspections and residual pesticides testing that the specialist processors are. He laments, "Taiwan today produces tealeaves, but has no real tea industry."

Though most people believe that the flavor of Taiwanese teas is far superior to that of imported teas, that might not be the case with regard to pesticides.

"Teas originating outside of Taiwan are tested before being imported," says Ted Fan, secretary-general of the TTMA. "The government certifies only a small amount of locally grown tea to contain safe levels of residual agricultural chemicals. Most locally grown tea never undergoes any testing at all. If it weren't 'diluted' by blending with imported teas, domestically grown teas would be unlikely to pass residual pesticides testing.

"If we are to resolve the residual pesticides problem, we have to start at the source: managing the application of fertilizers and pesticides," says Fan. He explains that some of the growing areas in Vietnam are brand new, their soil so fertile that growers needn't apply any chemicals. In contrast, the soil of some of Taiwan's older growing areas has been exhausted, forcing growers to fertilize constantly and virtually "irrigate" with pesticides.

Moreover, Taiwan's tea plantations cluster closely together in its growing areas. Even growers who don't spray may find their crops "sharing" pesticides blown over from a neighbor's fields.

When Li Qinglin, who grows his teas in an environmentally friendly fashion in Ming-jian Township, sent a batch of tea to SGS for testing in May, he learned that they contained residual amounts of the pesticides Chlor-fenapyr (0.02 parts per million) and Imidacloprid (0.06 ppm). Though the amounts were well below the 2-ppm and 3-ppm levels considered safe in Taiwan, the presence of the pesticides prevented him from getting his tea certified as organic. Li, who cannot stop the wind from coating his tea in the pesticides his neighbors are spraying, is enormously frustrated.

Given that tealeaves are steeped in water to make a beverage, residual pesticides are a real concern. The consumers and growers who are so eagerly pursuing fine aromas and accurate place-of-origin certifications might want to also pay heed to the toxicity of residual pesticides.