Overview
This second paper by Gajek and colleagues adds 35 counterfeit whisky products (9 anonymous sources) to the 170 authentic whiskies of their companion paper and compares their elemental profiles, pH and strontium and copper isotope ratios. Table 2 gives new statistics for the 35 counterfeits; the authentic data are reprinted from the companion paper and are not re-extracted here. Three counterfeits from one source exceeded the Polish cadmium limit.
Key numbers
- Counterfeits: cadmium mean 6.110 µg/L, median 0.760 µg/L, maximum 65.90 µg/L; lead mean 12.84 µg/L, maximum 35.60 µg/L (Table 2).
- Cadmium 32.25 to 65.90 µg/L in samples F10 to F12 from one common source, above the 0.03 mg/L Polish limit (Section 3.1).
- Nickel median 39.86 µg/L in counterfeits versus 12.96 µg/L in authentic whiskies (Table 3).
Methods (brief)
Sample preparation, instruments and validation follow the companion paper (microwave nitric acid digestion; ICP-MS, ICP-OES, and cold-vapor AAS for mercury). Detection limits are not printed in this paper. Mercury was below the quantification limit in every counterfeit.
Evidence Fitness
The counterfeit data are new, but they describe illicit or unidentified whisky analogs, not genuine whiskey, so they are a proxy for the whiskey page and it is not linked. The copper mean differs between Table 2 (2383 µg/L) and Table 3 (4021 µg/L), and the text misprints the copper maximum. The authentic-whisky rows duplicate gajek2022-whisky-elemental-fingerprints-type-age-origin and must not be counted twice. Results are per litre.
Related evidence
- The Elemental Fingerprints of Different Types of Whisky as Determined by ICP-OES and ICP-MS Techniques in Relation to Their Type, Age, and Origin
- Cadmium
- Lead
- Nickel
Update history
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