Cherfi et al. 2014 — Cr, Pb, Zn, and Cu in fruits and vegetables consumed in Algeria

Cherfi and colleagues measured chromium, lead, zinc, and copper in selected fruits and vegetables sold in Algeria and estimated dietary exposure for adults in Boumerdes. The source reports arithmetic mean concentrations in mg/kg dry weight for two fruit and thirteen vegetable foodstuffs. Chromium is reported as total chromium only; no Cr(III)/Cr(VI) speciation is provided.

Key numbers

Table 1 reports concentrations of metals in mg/kg dry weight:

Additional source-reported ranges and exposure estimates:

• Abstract concentration ranges were Cu 4-29.49, Zn 11.17-49, Pb 12.33-39.33, and Cr 3-16.33 mg/kg dry wt..
• The results section gives the same ranges, with Cu minimum 3.83 mg/kg in zucchinis and Cr maximum 16.33 mg/kg in onions.
• Table 3 global estimated daily intake values were Cu 12.185, Zn 17.998, Pb 15.659, and Cr 7.547 µg/day/kg body weight; the printed table renders these as 12,185, 17,998, 15,659, and 7547, but the discussion on page 5 confirms the comma is a decimal separator and the µ is rendered as “l” in the PDF extraction.
• The abstract states Pb EDI was 15.66 µg Pb/kg body weight/day and Pb THQ was 4.37 (a rounded form of the 15.659 in Table 3 and the 4.38628 GTHQ in Table 4).
• Table 4 global target hazard quotients were Cu 0.30463, Zn 0.05999, Pb 4.38628, and Cr 0.00503; the combined global THQ was 4.75594.
• Table 4 reports the highest food-level combined target hazard quotient for potatoes at 2.06995, driven by Pb THQi 1.83633.

Methods (brief)

Samples of two fruits and thirteen vegetables were collected during the first two weeks of May 2012 from two wholesale markets surrounding and supplying Boumerdes, about 50 km east of Algiers. Approximately 4 kg of each foodstuff was purchased from different sellers, household-pretreated by washing and removing rotten or inedible parts, homogenized, oven-dried at 105 °C for 24 h, dry-ashed at 450 °C, digested with concentrated nitric acid, filtered, and diluted to 50 mL. Pb, Zn, Cu, and Cr were measured by flame atomic absorption spectrometry on a Unicam Solar-929 with five readings per solution. Food-ingestion rates came from 843 self-administered questionnaires collected at market exits.

Implications

This source contributes Algeria-market occurrence evidence for total Cr, Pb, Zn, and Cu in fresh fruit, leafy vegetables, non-root vegetables, and root/tuber vegetables. The values are dry-weight foodstuff concentrations from a small regional market survey, so they should not be mixed with wet-weight/as-consumed produce values without an explicit basis conversion. The chromium results are total chromium context and are not suitable for Cr(VI)-specific pooling.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• fruits
• Vegetables
• Root vegetables
• Leafy Vegetables
• Fresh Fruit
• Non-Root Vegetables
• Root and Tuber Vegetables
• Leafy / Green Vegetables, Other
• Chromium
• Lead
• Zinc
• Copper

Verification notes

• PDF text extracted with pdftotext -layout; the extracted text contained the title/DOI page, Table 1 concentration data, methods, exposure tables, discussion, conclusion, and references.
• DOI verified from the first page as 10.1016/j.fct.2014.04.044; DOI, raw-handle, and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• The concentration table values above were checked against Table 1 in the extracted text. Units are copied as mg/kg dry weight; no conversion to fresh weight was made.
• Speciation: chromium is total Cr only. The source does not report Cr(III), Cr(VI), arsenic, mercury, cadmium, methylmercury, or inorganic arsenic.
• The Table 3 EDI row prints global values with comma separators (12,185, 17,998, 15,659, 7547); the discussion text on page 5 confirms these are decimals (12.185–17.998–7.547 µg metal/kg body weight/day for Cu, Zn, Cr and 15.659 µg Pb/kg body weight/day for Pb), so the Key numbers section reports the period-separated forms. The PDF text extraction renders µ as “l”; this page normalises the unit to µg.
• Frontmatter product and ingredient slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md; no new slug was invented.
• The matrices: algeria-market token follows the existing country-market idiom (libya-market, nigeria-market, bangladesh-market) used on other market-survey source pages; it is not a formal controlled-vocabulary entry but matches the established pattern for “purchased from country X retail markets” provenance.

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.