Overview
This pilot study from the French food safety agency laboratory validated an ICP-MS method against three insect reference materials and applied it to 27 packages of whole dried insects, scorpions and tarantulas bought in France and online. Crickets, mealworms and locusts carried low arsenic, cadmium and lead, while scorpions and tarantulas carried much more cadmium, enough that the authors’ tolerable-intake calculation allows only one to three tarantulas a day.
Key numbers
- Crickets (8 packages): arsenic 2.622 to 21.07, cadmium 13.75 to 76.6, lead 15.18 to 96.9 µg/kg (Table 3).
- Mealworms from France (3 packages): cadmium 77.7 to 83.5 µg/kg, lead 6.03 to 7.5 µg/kg (Table 3).
- Tarantulas: cadmium 8,582 to 13,200 µg/kg and lead 464.79 to 1,064 µg/kg; scorpions cadmium 539 to 2,272 µg/kg (Table 3).
- Silkworm lead is 87.3 µg/kg in Table 3 but 47.3 µg/kg in the comparison Table 7.
Methods (brief)
Whole insects were ball-milled, digested with nitric acid in a closed microwave system and analyzed by ICP-MS/MS for 19 elements. Accuracy was checked with black soldier fly, cricket and mealworm reference materials, with recoveries mostly 90 to 110%. Each package was measured in duplicate; results are on an as-purchased (dried) basis.
Evidence Fitness
Direct retail data for edible insects with strong matrix-matched quality control. Limits: a small pilot set (one to eight packages per type, several from the same lot), no purchase dates, no detection limits in the main text, and some products contained added salt or oil. Scorpions and tarantulas are arachnids, not insects, so keep them apart from insect averages.