Overview
González-Suárez and colleagues analysed 45 glass-jar baby foods bought in Tenerife, grouped as fruit, vegetable, meat and mixed jars, for 19 elements by ICP-OES. Mean lead was 0.11 to 0.17 mg/kg wet weight in every group, above the EU limit for infant foods, while cadmium stayed below its limit. Aluminum averaged 5.5 to 8.2 mg/kg.
Key numbers
- Lead: fruit 0.11 ± 0.04, vegetable 0.14 ± 0.04, meat “0.17 ± 0.05”, mixed 0.16 ± 0.03 mg/kg wet weight (Table 5).
- Cadmium: 0.01 to 0.03 mg/kg wet weight across groups (Table 5).
- Nickel in vegetable jars 0.87 ± 0.07 mg/kg, versus 0.13 to 0.17 mg/kg in the other groups (Table 5).
Methods (brief)
Ten grams of homogenized sample in triplicate were dried, treated with nitric acid and dry-ashed at 450 °C, then analysed by ICP-OES. Accuracy was checked with bovine liver, apple leaves and typical diet reference materials (recoveries 93 to 103%).
Evidence Fitness
A modest retail set from one island, reported as group means with standard deviations. The lithium row in Table 5 repeats the magnesium row and is flagged as a likely error. Jarred purees and meals are a proxy for teething-and-snacks: the paper measures no teething biscuits or snacks, so it is not linked to that page. Arsenic and mercury were not measured.