Overview
Awoyale and colleagues bought powdered pepper at six markets in Kwara State and prepared one control powder in the laboratory, then measured aflatoxins by HPLC and lead, arsenic, copper and cadmium by ICP-MS. Table 2 gives one mean ± SD (three replicate readings) per sample. Lead and arsenic were present in every sample and cadmium was not detected.
Key numbers
- Lead: 1.84 (Offa) to 6.25 mg/kg (Ganmo), table mean 3.47 mg/kg (Table 2, p. 815).
- Arsenic: 10.18 (Ganmo) to 22.68 mg/kg (Offa), with 21.75 mg/kg in the laboratory control (Table 2, p. 815).
- Cadmium: not detected in any sample (Table 2, p. 815).
Methods (brief)
ICP-MS (PerkinElmer ELAN DRC-e); the digestion step, detection limits and any reference material or recovery are not described. The ± values are SDs of three replicate determinations of one sample per market.
Evidence Fitness
One sample per market, no QA, and no stated detection limits. Arsenic at 10 to 23 mg/kg is very high for pepper and is not speciated. The text says Ganmo had the highest lead at 3.45 mg/kg and gives a mean arsenic of 12.01 mg/kg, both of which conflict with Table 2; table values are used and flagged. The sentence saying pepper “was not contaminated” with cadmium or lead describes an earlier Osun State study (Farombi et al. 2020), not these samples. Powdered pepper is a spice proxy for barbecue-sauce and green-bell-pepper; those pages are not linked.