Elbagermi et al. 2012 — Pb, Cd, Zn, Cu, Co, and Ni in fruits and vegetables from Misurata, Libya

Elbagermi and colleagues measured lead, cadmium, zinc, copper, cobalt, and nickel in selected fruits and vegetables collected from production and market sites in the Misurata area of Libya. The study reports dry-weight concentrations for nine fruits and seven vegetables, using atomic absorption spectrophotometry. No arsenic, mercury, methylmercury, inorganic arsenic, or chromium species are reported.

Key numbers

Table 2 reports concentrations of heavy metals in mg/kg or ppm; the text states the concentrations are based on sample dry weight:

Additional source-reported summary values:

• Abstract concentration ranges were Pb 0.02-1.824, Cu 0.75-6.21, Zn 0.042-11.4, Co 0.141-1.168, Ni 0.19-5.143, and Cd 0.01-0.362 mg/kg.
• Highest mean levels named in the abstract were Pb in mango, Cu in melon, Zn in spinach, Co in banana, Ni in mango, and Cd in mango.
• Table 3 daily-intake estimates: fruits (78 g/person/day) Pb 36.89 μg/day, Cd 5.54 μg/day, Zn 0.288 mg/day, Cu 0.205 mg/day, Co 45.24 μg/day, Ni 0.116 mg/day.
• Table 3 daily-intake estimates: vegetables (98 g/person/day) Pb 24.8 μg/day, Cd 13.3 μg/day, Zn 0.8 mg/day, Cu 0.33 mg/day, Co 49.7 μg/day, Ni 0.0231 mg/day.
• The paper states WHO/FAO safe values for fruit and vegetables of Cu 40, Pb 0.3, and Cd 0.2 mg/kg, and concludes that the collected fruit and vegetables contained measured heavy-metal contents within those 1999 WHO limits.

Methods (brief)

A total of 250 fruit and vegetable samples were purchased from several local suppliers and markets in Misurata City, Libya, during 2010. Two kilograms of each commodity were sampled per district, edible portions were retained, and bruised or rotten parts were removed. One-kilogram subsamples were taken from a 10 kg composite sample, oven-dried at 105 °C for 24 h, powdered, dry-ashed at 550 °C for 6 h with nitric acid added before ashing, rinsed with 3 N hydrochloric acid, filtered, and diluted to 50 mL. Pb, Cd, Zn, Cu, Co, and Ni were measured by atomic absorption spectrometry on a Hitachi 180-30 instrument. Validation used repeated analyses against NIST plant standard reference material.

Implications

This source contributes Libya-market occurrence evidence for Pb, Cd, Zn, Cu, Co, and Ni in fresh fruit, leafy vegetables, non-root vegetables, and root/tuber vegetables. The dry-weight basis should be kept separate from wet-weight or as-consumed produce datasets unless a documented conversion is added. The source does not support arsenic, mercury, methylmercury, inorganic arsenic, or chromium-speciation claims.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• fruits
• vegetables
• root-vegetables
• leafy-vegetables
• fresh-fruit
• non-root-vegetables
• root-tuber-vegetables
• leafy-vegetables-other
• lead
• cadmium
• zinc
• copper
• cobalt
• nickel

Verification notes

• PDF text extracted with pdftotext -layout; the extracted text contained the title/DOI page, methods, Table 1 instrument conditions, Table 2 concentration data, Table 3 intake estimates, discussion, conclusion, and references.
• DOI verified from the first page as 10.5402/2012/827645; DOI, raw-handle, and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• Table 2 concentration values and Table 3 intake values were checked against the extracted text. Units are copied as mg/kg or ppm, μg/day, and mg/day; no conversions were made.
• Source-internal inconsistency: the abstract reports the Zn range as 0.042-11.4 mg/kg while Table 2 prints spinach Zn as 16.83 ± 2.82 and also names spinach as the highest-Zn commodity. This page transcribes Table 2 as printed and records the abstract range separately.
• Speciation: the paper reports only total elements for Pb, Cd, Zn, Cu, Co, and Ni. It does not report As, Hg, MeHg, iAs, Cr, Cr(III), or Cr(VI).
• Frontmatter product and ingredient slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md; no new slug was invented.

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.