Overview
Ahmed bought local and imported tomato, eggplant and pepper at an Erbil vegetable market and measured lead, manganese, zinc and cadmium by X-ray fluorescence on oven-dried edible parts. Every lead and cadmium value is far above the FAO/WHO figures the paper cites, and imported produce was higher than local for both metals. The journal tags it a review article, but it reports original measurements.
Key numbers
- Local eggplant: lead 102 mg/kg, cadmium 7 mg/kg; local tomato lead 40, cadmium 3 mg/kg (Table 2, p. 81).
- Imported eggplant: lead 122 mg/kg, cadmium 8 mg/kg; imported pepper lead 62.3, cadmium 7 mg/kg (Table 3, p. 81).
- Zinc 15 to 55 mg/kg and manganese 12 to 32 mg/kg across all six (Tables 2 and 3).
Methods (brief)
About 1 kg of edible portion per vegetable, washed, oven-dried for 72 hours and powdered; XRF analysis. Results are on a dry-weight basis. No detection limits, reference materials, recoveries, replicates or sample counts are reported.
Evidence Fitness
One value per vegetable and origin with no sample count or QA. XRF on dried plant powder is a screening technique, and lead values of 40 to 122 mg/kg are orders of magnitude above typical vegetables, so treat the levels as unverified. For vegetables-mixed it is a proxy (individual fruiting vegetables, not a mixed product).