Overview
A market basket survey of five fruits sold in Awka, southeast Nigeria, measured total arsenic, mercury, copper and lead by AAS in unwashed, unpeeled fruit. Arsenic was reported at 20 to 97 µg/g dry weight in every fruit, far above Codex levels, while lead was mostly below detection. Apples were imported; the other fruits were local.
Key numbers
- Apple: arsenic 51.58 (50.97-52.19), mercury 0.18 (0.10-0.26), copper 0.11 (0.08-0.14) µg/g dry weight; lead <0.001 µg/g (Table 1).
- Guava: arsenic 20.0 (19.49-20.51), mercury 0.89 (0.56-1.22), lead 0.05 (0.03-0.07) µg/g dry weight (Table 1).
- Pawpaw: arsenic 96.84 (<0.001-96.84) µg/g dry weight (Table 1).
Methods (brief)
Fruit was diced, oven-dried at 55 °C, microwave-digested in nitric acid and analyzed by AAS at a commercial laboratory, with NIST apple leaves, pine needles and rice flour reference materials (recoveries 75 to 98.5%). Detection limit 0.001 µg/g. Wet-weight comparisons appear only in bar charts.
Evidence Fitness
Analytical plausibility is low: arsenic at tens of µg/g in fruit is far above values reported elsewhere, two arsenic means equal their maxima despite minima below detection (flagged), and the sample count is unclear (ten vs three). Results are dry weight on unwashed whole fruit. The apple data are a proxy for apple pie (no pie measured), so the apple-pie page is not linked.