The culprit? Atta. The wheat flour which the family used every day in Bangalore was contaminated with lead, a fine powder of the toxic metal trickling in from the axle of the roller flour machine. Over the years, it had mixed with the atta to continuously add noxious ingredient into the staple food of Lotias. "My request is that people should realise that these are sources of lead, so harmful that it makes people anaemic and also affects the brain," laments Lotia.