Fagbemi et al. 2023 - Lead in street-hawked foods from Akure, Nigeria

Fagbemi and colleagues measured minerals and lead in selected street-hawked foods from Akure metropolis, Nigeria. The source reports lead in all sampled foods, including rice and stew, African star apple, cucumber, white pap, meat pie, zobo drink, and smoked fish. It is routeable as broad ready-to-eat street-food occurrence evidence rather than as evidence for the auto-fetched filename’s metal-utensil product cell.

Key numbers

Table 1 labels the composition unit as mg/100 g. The discussion later uses mg/kg language for some elements, so downstream extraction should preserve the table unit and treat the source as unit-ambiguous unless the original table is rechecked.

The paper states that lead was detected in all street-food samples and compares all values against cited WHO/FAO, EU, and USEPA limits. Cucumber carried the highest table-reported lead value, while African star apple and rice-and-stew also exceeded the paper’s cited low lead thresholds.

Methods (brief)

The authors purchased cucumber, orange or African star apple, pap, cooked rice, garden egg or zobo, meat pie, and smoked fish from street-food locations in Akure. One gram of each sample was ashed at 550 C, dissolved in nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, diluted to 100 mL, and analyzed for Ca, Cu, Fe, Zn, and Pb by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The paper reports mean +/- SD and used ANOVA with Duncan’s multiple range test.

Implications

Certification: Adds Nigeria-market ready-to-eat food occurrence evidence for lead, but the unit inconsistency means this source should be admitted cautiously and with the table-unit trace preserved.

Courses: Useful for illustrating street-vending exposure pathways and why food category, location, and traffic environment can matter.

App: Supports broad food-route context for mixed meals, fruit, cucumber/non-root vegetables, and smoked fish rather than a single packaged-food product row.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• rice
• cucumber
• fruit
• fish
• mixed-meals-rice-containing
• cereal-meals
• fresh-fruit
• non-root-vegetables
• fresh-fish
• lead
• copper
• iron
• zinc

Verification notes

• The auto-fetched filename labels the file as a metal-utensil lead product hit, but the PDF is a street-hawked food study.
• Table 1 labels units as mg/100 g, while the text discusses some element ranges as mg/kg. Values above follow the table label and should not be silently converted without a unit audit.
• Product names are generic food categories, not consumer brands.

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.