Overview
Cobalt is an essential trace metal as the central metal in vitamin B12, but cobalt-containing dusts and hard-metal materials can produce respiratory toxicity, allergic dermatitis, cardiomyopathy, and carcinogenicity concerns. Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021 is attached as the first chapter-level toxicology source for this node.
Status
This page is a source-map stub created during the re-ingest of Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021. Substantive cobalt-specific expansion awaits a dedicated cobalt ingest.
Additional source evidence
Baseline concentration of heavy metals in agricultural soils provides total-metal soil statistics for 13 agricultural watersheds in Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Its soil values do not establish edible-crop concentrations or transfer factors.
Chromium research: qualified source context
One Nilore, Islamabad soil characterization reported cobalt of 0.76 µg/g by bulk elemental analysis (Table 2). The source does not state a wet/dry basis or replicated uncertainty. This is a local soil result; it does not measure food occurrence or crop transfer. LABORATORY SCALE ELECTROKINETIC REMEDIATION OF HEXAVALENT CHROMIUM FROM CONTAMINATED SOIL
Arzew surface-soil survey
Boudia et al. reported cobalt mean 12.41 mg/kg in nine beach-zone soils and 7.38 mg/kg in 14 industrial-zone soils around Arzew. These air-dried soil summaries have distinct sampling frames; they are not food occurrence. The prose maximum differs from the tabulated maxima and remains an explicit source discrepancy (2019, Table 2). Spatial contamination and health risks of heavy metal(loid)s in surface soils from a petrochemical complex in the north-eastern region of Algeria
Frequently asked questions
What is cobalt and why does the body need it?
Cobalt is an essential trace metal, meaning the body requires small amounts of it. Its essential role comes from being the central metal atom in vitamin B12, according to Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021.
What health effects can cobalt cause?
The attached toxicology source notes that cobalt-containing dusts and hard-metal materials can produce respiratory toxicity, allergic dermatitis, cardiomyopathy, and carcinogenicity concerns Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021. The page does not quantify these effects or tie them to specific dietary exposures.
Which forms of cobalt are associated with toxicity?
The page attributes cobalt’s toxic effects specifically to cobalt-containing dusts and hard-metal (hard-metal/tungsten-carbide) materials rather than to cobalt in general Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021. It does not describe toxicity thresholds or food-specific exposure levels.
How much does this page currently tell me about cobalt in food?
Very little. This is a source-map stub created during the re-ingest of Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021, and it states that substantive, cobalt-specific expansion awaits a dedicated cobalt ingest. At present it carries only a general characterization of cobalt and a single attached toxicology source.
Sources
- Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021 — Ufelle AC, Barchowsky A, 2021. Toxic Effects of Metals, Ch 23 in Casarett & Doull’s Essentials of Toxicology, 4th ed.
References
Works cited in this page’s text, in first-appearance order. See Sources for this page’s source inventory. Each title links to its source record, which carries the ingest receipt, the extracted values, and the file hash of the document it was built from.
- Toxic Effects of Metals (Chapter 23), in Casarett & Doull’s Essentials of Toxicology, Fourth EditionTextbook
- Baseline concentration of heavy metals in agricultural soilsPeer-reviewed
- LABORATORY SCALE ELECTROKINETIC REMEDIATION OF HEXAVALENT CHROMIUM FROM CONTAMINATED SOILPeer-reviewed
- Spatial contamination and health risks of heavy metal(loid)s in surface soils from a petrochemical complex in the north-eastern region of AlgeriaPeer-reviewed
- Effects of sewage water irrigation on heavy metals accumulation in vegetables in peri-urban areas of Faisalabad, PakistanPeer-reviewed
- Study of Peculiarities of Accumulation of Heavy Metals and Arsenic in Medicinal Plant Raw Materials of Synanthropic Flora of Voronezh RegionPeer-reviewed
- Analysis of a Wild Leafy Vegetable (Premna latifolia Roxb.) Samples for Essential Trace Elements using ICP - MS TechniquePeer-reviewed
- Comparative Analysis of Bioremediation and Phytoremediation in Mitigation of Heavy MetalsPeer-reviewed
Update history
No substantive edit history is available in this build. The full commit record is available in git.
Additional geographic and remediation evidence
Muhammad Abubakar, 2025. Abubakar and colleagues measured seven metals in sewage water, soil, spinach and cauliflower at two peri-urban sites in Faisalabad, Pakistan. The paper reports substantial differences between the two crop/site combinations, but its design does not separate plant-species effects from location. Concentrations are retained with the source’s measurement and tissue limitations. These are localized paired environmental and crop measurements, with plant results routed as leafy-tissue evidence. They do not establish a cauliflower-head concentration, a fresh-weight concentration, or a causal reduction in biomass from metal exposure. Industrial source attribution is proposed by the authors, rather than measured by a source-apportionment experiment.
Nina Alekseevna Dyakova, 2023. Dyakova compares nine elements in medicinal plant materials collected in disturbed and control environments in Russia’s Voronezh region during 2015–2020. The reported ranges preserve tissue and environmental setting; the paper also proposes regional background means across species. Supports geographic and tissue-specific contamination evidence for botanical raw materials and environmental attribution hypotheses. It does not measure finished supplements or isolate an individual polluter’s causal contribution.
G. Narayana Murthy, 2024. Premna latifolia leaves collected in three Andhra Pradesh villages had different reported elemental concentrations. Village-specific values are preserved as local leafy-vegetable evidence; the paper supplies no replicate counts or uncertainty estimates. Supports geographic variation in six elements in a specific wild edible leaf. It does not establish nutritional adequacy, safety, or a regional market distribution. The source’s characterization of aluminium as an essential nutrient is not adopted.
Kranti Ozarkar, 2025. This experiment compares bacterial cultures and aquatic plants under nickel and cobalt exposure. Its charts and narrative describe remediation potential, but missing residual concentrations, uncertainty and method details prevent a reproducible quantitative removal estimate. Supports bounded remediation-method context. Colorimetric bacterial growth cannot by itself establish metal removal; the claim of superior plant performance is not a validated paired efficacy estimate. Pure bacterial isolates do not measure a host microbiome.