Overview
Costea and colleagues collected 62 bell pepper samples and 62 paired soils from home gardens around the former Copsa Mica smelter and measured cadmium, copper, lead and zinc by AAS. Table 2 gives summary statistics on a fresh-weight basis, and fruit metals correlated weakly with soil totals.
Key numbers
- Lead: mean 0,075 mg/kg FW (SD 0,07), maximum 0,351 mg/kg FW (Table 2).
- Cadmium: 0,005 to 0,16 mg/kg FW, mean 0,03 mg/kg FW, median 0,023 mg/kg FW (Table 2); the text gives a maximum of 0.162 mg/kg.
- Zinc: 1.4 to 7.0 mg/kg FW (abstract).
Methods (brief)
Fruit was washed, chopped and digested with nitric acid by microwave, then analysed by flame or graphite furnace AAS. Detection limits and quality control are not reported.
Evidence Fitness
A good sample size from a known industrial contamination area (site context: industrial), so values describe home-garden produce near a smelter, not general supply. The printed cadmium SD conflicts with its mean and CV. Pepper colour is not stated, so the green-bell-pepper page is not linked. The journal header year (2023) differs from the manifest year (2024).