Dabeka 1995 - Canadian food composite metals

Dabeka and McKenzie measured lead, cadmium, fluoride, nickel, and cobalt in Canadian total-diet food composites prepared from retail foods purchased in five cities during 1986-1988. Lead and cadmium were analyzed in all city composite sets, while fluoride, nickel, and cobalt were city-limited. Fluoride is documented here because the paper reports it, but it is not lifted into the HMTc metals frontmatter.

Key numbers

The abstract reports mean and range concentrations in individual samples as follows:

The highest mean lead levels in individual composites were reported for canned luncheon meats 163 ng/g, canned beans 158 ng/g, canned citrus fruit 126 ng/g, canned peaches 133 ng/g, canned pears 131 ng/g, and canned and raw cherries 203 ng/g. In canned foods, mean lead levels decreased from 73.6 ng/g in 1985 to 46 ng/g in 1988, and median levels decreased from 42.7 ng/g in 1986 to 8.4 ng/g in 1988.

For cadmium, the paper reports overall mean, median, and range values of 9.96, 2.37, and <0.02-167 ng/g. The highest individual-composite cadmium levels were in meat organs 120 ng/g, wheat and bran cereals 56.5 ng/g, potato chips 93 ng/g, and peanut butter 50 ng/g. Food categories with the highest mean cadmium concentrations were bakery goods and cereals 16.6 ng/g, vegetables 16.5 ng/g, and fats and oils 17.4 ng/g.

For nickel, the paper reports overall mean, median, and range values of 196, 59, and <1-2521 ng/g. Food categories with the highest mean nickel concentrations were meat and poultry 385 ng/g, soups 291 ng/g, bakery goods and cereals 256 ng/g, and fats and oils 566 ng/g.

For cobalt, the paper reports overall mean, median, and range values of 9.4, 4.1, and <0.3-75.7 ng/g. Food categories with the highest mean cobalt levels were fish 19.9 ng/g, bakery goods and cereals 17.9 ng/g, and fats and oils 16.1 ng/g; the major contributor within fats and oils was peanut butter at 35.7 ng/g.

Table 5 reports dietary intakes in ug/day:

Table 6 reports food-category contributions to dietary intake across all ages and sexes. The highest contributors were beverages for lead (20.9%) and fluoride (80.0%), bakery goods and cereals for cadmium (36.8%) and cobalt (29.8%), vegetables for cadmium (40.3%) and cobalt (21.9%), and meat and poultry for nickel (37.0%).

Methods (brief)

Foods were purchased at retail level in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax, prepared for consumption, homogenized, grouped into 113 composites and 39 composite subsets per city set, and rehomogenized. Lead, cadmium, cobalt, and nickel were determined by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry after nitric/perchloric acid digestion and ammonium pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate coprecipitation. Fluoride was determined by fluoride-specific electrode after microdiffusion separation. Quality control used recovery studies and reference materials, including Prosobee infant formula powder, NRCC DORM-1 dogfish muscle, and NIST citrus leaves.

Implications

This source provides Canadian total-diet composite occurrence and intake context for Pb, Cd, Ni, and Co across broad food categories. Its composite design supports broad category routing, especially cereals/bakery, vegetables, beverages, peanut butter/fats, fish/shellfish, and canned-food context, rather than narrow product-row benchmarking. Fluoride values are preserved in the body as source facts but are not routed as HMTc metal evidence.

Verification notes

• PDF text was extracted with pdftotext -layout; the abstract, Lead Survey Results, Cadmium Survey Results, Nickel Survey Results, Cobalt Survey Results, Table 5, and Table 6 were checked in /tmp/ingest_f3_dabeka1995.txt.
• No DOI was reported in the PDF; no_doi_assigned: true is paired with the publisher article access URL. Raw handle MFK_dabeka1995 and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• Concentration units are preserved as ng/g; dietary intake units are preserved as source-printed ug/day. No conversion to µg/day, ppm, or wet/dry basis was performed.
• Speciation: the paper reports elemental lead, cadmium, nickel, cobalt, and fluoride; no arsenic or mercury speciation issue is present.
• Brand firewall: Prosobee is named only as a laboratory reference material in Methods, not attached to consumer contamination values.
• Frontmatter slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md; missing narrow total-diet composite slugs include canned luncheon meats, canned citrus fruit, canned peaches, canned pears, cherries, meat organs, potato chips, and soups, so broad product/category routing is used.

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.