Overview
Fayet-Moore and colleagues bought every pink salt available in four supermarkets, green grocers and health food shops in three Australian locations in June 2018, plus one iodized white table salt as a control. Each salt was scanned once by ICP-MS for 25 elements. Per-product values are in Tables 2 and 3 and summary statistics in Table 4. The PDF is the Bond University repository copy of the published article.
Key numbers
- Lead in pink salt: mean 0.13 mg/kg, SD 0.46, range 0.00 to 2.59 mg/kg; iodized white control 0.02 mg/kg (Table 4, p. 8).
- The highest lead value, 2.59 mg/kg, was a fine-grain pink salt from Peru (Table 3, p. 6).
- Arsenic was not detected in any pink salt; cadmium and mercury were at most 0.03 and 0.02 mg/kg (Table 3, p. 6).
- Aluminum in pink salt averaged 76.27 mg/kg (range 0.00 to 192.65) versus 0.00 in the control (Table 4, p. 8).
Methods (brief)
About 0.4 g of each salt was digested in aqua regia on a hot block at 120 °C for 1 h and analysed on a PerkinElmer NexION 300D ICP-MS at a NATA-accredited laboratory. Each sample was tested once; no LOD, certified reference material or recovery is reported.
Evidence Fitness
A complete snapshot of the 2018 Australian retail range, but single tests, no QA data, and values printed to two decimals, so 0.00 cannot be told apart from a non-detect. Table 4 labels chromium, molybdenum and selenium in µg, about ten times lower than the per-product mg/kg values imply. Only one iodized white table salt (n=1) was measured directly for the iodized-salt page; the pink salts are a proxy.