Overview
Dinkelaker and colleagues measured strontium, lead, arsenic, zinc, nickel, manganese oxide and total chromium by X-ray fluorescence in dried wild cowberry, blueberry and cranberry harvested in four regions of North-West Russia. Table 1 gives one mean per species and region. The authors report moderate exceedances of Russian limits for lead and arsenic and point to roads and logging as likely sources.
Key numbers
- Blueberry, Leningrad region: lead “8±2,3” mg/kg, arsenic “3±0,8” mg/kg (Table 1, p. 3).
- Blueberry, Vologda region: lead “6±1,8” mg/kg, nickel “3±0,1” mg/kg, chromium “38±3” mg/kg (Table 1).
- Cowberry, Novgorod region: lead “7±2,5” mg/kg (Table 1).
- Blueberry lead for Novgorod is printed as ”-” without explanation (Table 1).
Methods (brief)
Berries collected 2017 to 2019, dried at 20 °C with ventilation for at least 40 hours, ground and analyzed by X-ray fluorescence. No detection limits, reference materials or recoveries are reported, and sample counts per species and region are not given.
Evidence Fitness
Conference-proceedings paper with one dry-weight mean per species and region and an undefined ± statistic. X-ray fluorescence is a screening method at these levels, and lead and arsenic in the milligram per kilogram range are high for berries, so treat the numbers as uncertain. The text also mentions a mercury exceedance although mercury was not measured. Wild blueberry is an ingredient proxy for blueberry-muffin; the paper measures no baked product.