Overview
Ertl and Goessler bought rye, spelt and wheat grains, white and whole flours, breads, pretzel sticks and pastas in Austria and measured 27 elements by ICP-MS. Tables 3 and 4 give mean ± SD for each of 20 product groups on a dry-mass basis. Toxic elements were low throughout, and lead and mercury were often below detection.
Key numbers
- Whole wheat pasta (n = 4): lead 0.009 ± 0.005, cadmium 0.028 ± 0.011, arsenic 0.009 ± 0.007 mg/kg dry mass; mercury below 0.002 mg/kg (Table 4, p. 2071).
- Wheat flour type 480 (n = 14): lead below 0.004 mg/kg, cadmium 0.020 ± 0.004 mg/kg; wheat whole flour cadmium 0.034 ± 0.015 mg/kg (Table 3).
- Wheat flour bread (n = 11): lead 0.005 ± 0.001, cadmium 0.022 ± 0.004 mg/kg dry mass. One coloured pasta reached 0.050 mg/kg lead wet mass (Table 4; text p. 2073).
Methods (brief)
Breads and pastas were freeze-dried. All samples were microwave-digested in nitric acid (UltraCLAVE, 250 °C) and analyzed on an Agilent 8800 ICP-MS. Detection limits were lead 0.004, cadmium 0.005, arsenic 0.002 and mercury 0.002 mg/kg. Three reference materials (bovine muscle, NIST 1568b rice flour and an ALVA wheat round-robin sample) agreed with their certified values.
Evidence Fitness
Strong analytical quality with a moderate number of samples per group (3 to 14). Results are on a dry-mass basis; Table 1 gives water contents for conversion. Whole wheat pasta is direct for whole-wheat-pasta. White flour, bread and pasta are ingredient proxies for blueberry-muffin, doughnut, white-cake and macaroni-and-cheese, and those pages are not linked. Collection dates are not stated.