Overview
The authors screened 110 protein powder labels sold online in India against FSSAI rules and tested six products with the most violations for arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury by MP-AES. All six were plant-based (pea or soy) or plant and whey blends made in India.
Key numbers
- Arsenic 15.70 ± 1.76 to 43.96 ± 1.71 ppm (Table 1, p. 42).
- Lead 1.80 ± 0.78 to 3.20 ± 0.12 ppm; cadmium 0.03 ± 0.01 to 0.48 ± 0.28 ppm; mercury not detected (Table 1).
Methods (brief)
0.1 g digested in nitric acid on a hotplate and diluted to 10 mL; Agilent 4200 MP-AES, triplicate. No detection limits, blanks, recoveries or reference materials reported.
Evidence Fitness
Six purposively chosen products with no quality-control data. Arsenic at 15 to 44 mg/kg in protein powder is far above typical levels, and the method has no stated detection limits, so the values need caution. The article DOI is not printed in the PDF (only the journal DOI). Because the plant samples include soy and the rest are blends, this is a proxy for non-soy protein sources and meal-replacement drinks.