Overview
Brima, Haris, and Frei measured arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and lead in 152 African food and additive samples sold in the UK. The source is broad food-occurrence evidence, with a routeable spices subcategory and additional context for fish, prawns, and non-food additives such as kaun, calabash, and chuna.
Key numbers
- Sample set: 152 total duplicate measurements grouped as agricultural products, fishery products, processed foods including spices, and non-food additives.
- Average concentrations by broad group were reported in micrograms per gram dry weight: agricultural products had As 0.1, Cd 0.6, Hg not detected, and Pb 0.3; fishery products had As 15.4, Cd 0.3, Hg 0.07, and Pb 0.12; spices had As 0.13, Cd 0.1, Hg 0.1, and Pb 0.15; non-food additives had As 2.3, Cd 0.03, Hg not detected, and Pb 3.8.
- The authors report that prawn, kaun, and calabash exceeded hazard-quotient safety thresholds for arsenic, and calabash exceeded the hazard-quotient threshold for lead.
- Total hazard quotients across As, Cd, Hg, and Pb were above 1 for fish, prawn, kaun, calabash, and chuna: 1.01, 2.44, 3.48, 7.74, and 1.11, respectively.
- Incremental lifetime cancer risk exceeded the study guideline for Pb in 16 percent of all analyzed samples, for As in 4 percent, and for Cd in 2 percent.
Methods (brief)
The study measured As, Cd, Hg, and Pb by ICP-MS after acid digestion. The paper reports detection limits and quantification limits in micrograms per liter: As 0.07 and 0.23, Cd 0.04 and 0.13, Hg 0.08 and 0.27, and Pb 0.07 and 0.23. Quality assurance used certified strawberry-leaf material and spike recoveries; reported spike recoveries were As 86.9 percent, Cd 93.5 percent, Hg 110.5 percent, and Pb 94.48 percent.
Arsenic is total arsenic. The authors treat fishery-product arsenic risk separately by assuming 10 percent of total arsenic as inorganic arsenic for HQ and ILCR calculations.
Implications
Certification: The spices subgroup provides broad UK-market occurrence evidence for As, Cd, Hg, and Pb in African spices, but the source page should not be used as a spice-only distribution without the Table 2 subcategory values and sample frame kept attached.
Courses: This is a useful teaching source for separating food matrices from non-food additives; the highest health-risk findings are in kaun, calabash, chuna, fish, and prawns rather than in the spice subgroup alone.
App: The source supports a category-level flag for imported African spices and additives, especially where users may consume kaun, calabash, or chuna alongside foods.
Wiki pages this source may touch
- Spices
- Seafood
- Shellfish (shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, oysters, mussels)
- Spices
- Fish
- Shellfish
- Arsenic
- Cadmium
- Mercury
- Lead
Verification notes
- The abstract reports average concentrations for broad categories, including spices; Table 2 contains the subcategory structure used by the authors.
- The source is UK-market evidence for African foods, not primary evidence for African in-country market samples.
- Arsenic values are total arsenic unless otherwise stated; the authors’ risk calculation applies an inorganic-arsenic assumption for fishery products only.
Update history
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