Overview
Hossain and colleagues measured lead and cadmium by graphite furnace AAS in 60 retail samples of milled rice, black gram, small lentils and large lentils from five Dhaka wet markets, and reported results on a fresh-weight basis with exposure and risk indices. Mean cadmium was 0.36 to 0.60 mg/kg across the four foods, and lead was not detected in small lentils. The authors report a hazard index above 1 for rice in adults and children.
Key numbers
- Rice: lead 0.33 ± 0.68 mg/kg (below LOD to 1.60), cadmium 0.60 ± 0.51 mg/kg (below LOD to 1.42), fresh weight, n = 15 (Table 1).
- Black gram: lead 0.31 ± 0.43 mg/kg (below LOD to 0.81), cadmium 0.55 ± 0.36 mg/kg (below LOD to 0.97) (Table 1).
- Large lentils: lead 0.38 ± 0.36 mg/kg (below LOD to 0.79), cadmium 0.56 ± 0.38 mg/kg (0.16 to 0.99) (Table 1).
- Small lentils: lead below LOD, cadmium 0.36 ± 0.37 mg/kg (0.03 to 0.91) (Table 1).
Methods (brief)
Samples were oven-dried at 65 °C, milled and digested in nitric and perchloric acids, then read by graphite furnace AAS in triplicate. Results were converted to fresh weight with each sample’s measured moisture. LOD 0.011 mg/kg for lead and 0.016 mg/kg for cadmium; spike recoveries 94-105%. No certified reference material is reported.
Evidence Fitness
Fifteen market samples per food from a single city, pooled into one summary per food; no collection dates or per-market values. Lead and cadmium dispersion is wide (lead SD in rice twice the mean). The text gives large-lentil cadmium as 0.55 against 0.56 in Table 1, and its pollution-index text contradicts the small-lentil lead non-detects. The pulses are black gram and lentils, not common beans, so this is a proxy for pinto-beans and does not link that page.