Brima and Haris 2026 - toxic elements in UK tap and bottled drinking water
Brima and Haris measured 26 elements in bottled and tap drinking water from Leicester, UK, and compared the findings with literature reports for African drinking-water supplies. The paper is directly useful for bottled-drinking-water occurrence evidence because it separates bottled drinking water from tap drinking water and reports detection patterns for Cd, Pb, As, and Hg. The source also provides cross-market context rather than a pooled benchmark for African countries.
Key numbers
- n=93 total water samples: 45 bottled drinking water and 48 tap drinking water samples from Leicester, UK.
- Cd and Pb were detected only in tap drinking water, with detection percentages of 25% for Cd and 60.4% for Pb.
- As and Hg were detected at very low concentrations in both matrices: As in 82.2% of bottled and 88.9% of tap samples; Hg in 100% of bottled and 95.6% of tap samples.
- The authors report that all detected element concentrations were within WHO safety limits, and that HQ and ILCR values for toxic elements were below the study risk thresholds.
Methods (brief)
Samples were analyzed by ICP-MS for 26 elements. The paper distinguishes bottled drinking water from tap drinking water and evaluates HQ and ILCR for toxic elements.
Implications
Certification: contributes low-level UK bottled-water occurrence context for tAs/tHg and non-detect context for Cd/Pb in bottled water. Courses: useful example of matrix separation between bottled and tap drinking water. App: supports water-source caveats rather than product-wide pooling with African literature comparators.
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Verification notes
DOI, authors, journal, year, sample count, matrix split, and detection percentages were taken from the PDF first page/abstract. African-country values are literature comparators and should not be silently pooled with the UK sample set.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.