Overview
Aldeeb and colleagues measured cadmium, lead and mercury by atomic absorption in five canned sardine products from five Mediterranean countries and one fresh sardine sample, all bought in Libya. Lead was low in every sample, mercury was at or near zero except in the fresh fish, and cadmium was printed as 0.0 throughout. All values were below EU and WHO limits. Arsenic was not measured. The PDF prints the identifier aif-doi.org/LJEEST/050106 rather than the DOI 10.63359/zacqqj02 used here.
Key numbers
- Lead, canned sardines: 0.0070 to 0.0125 mg/kg (one value per product) (Table 2, p. 35).
- Mercury, canned sardines: 0.0 to 0.0002 mg/kg; fresh sardine 0.0095 mg/kg (Table 2, p. 35).
- Cadmium: 0.0 in all six samples (Table 2, p. 35).
Methods (brief)
Samples were dried at 110 °C, digested with nitric and sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide on a heat block, and analyzed by a commercial laboratory on an AAnalyst 800 AAS. The abstract describes graphite furnace AAS after microwave digestion, which the methods text does not match. No detection limits, reference materials or recoveries are reported.
Evidence Fitness
Six single samples with no QA data and an unclear weight basis. Zeros carry no detection limit. Direct evidence for tinned-fish, but only as a small screening snapshot.
Related evidence
Update history
No substantive edit history is available in this build. The full commit record is available in git.