Overview
Iessa and Hamdan bought eight leafy, root and fruit vegetables at the Sebha market in 2023 and measured copper, lead, cadmium and chromium by atomic absorption. Copper was not detected and lead was detected only in potatoes and lettuce. The cadmium and chromium values in Table 1 do not agree with the paper’s own Results text or abstract.
Key numbers
- Lead: 0.02 mg/kg dwt in potatoes and 0.03 mg/kg dwt in lettuce; not detected in the other six (Table 1, p. 3).
- Cadmium as printed in Table 1: courgette 20.8, potatoes 20.6, onion 12.1, carrot 2.14 mg/kg dwt; the Results text gives 0.85 to 2.36 ppm instead (p. 2-3).
- Chromium as printed in Table 1: spinach 62.1, lettuce 41.5 mg/kg dwt, against an abstract maximum of 8.13 ppm (Table 1, p. 3).
Methods (brief)
Edible parts were washed, oven-dried at 70 °C, ground and digested with nitric, perchloric and hydrochloric acids, then read by AAS. Only reagent blanks are reported; there is no LOD, reference material, recovery or sample count.
Evidence Fitness
Weak: one value per vegetable, no sample counts or QA, and Table 1 cadmium and chromium conflict with the text and abstract, so those values carry integrity flags. The conclusion also contradicts the reported exceedances. Lead and copper non-detects are the most usable results. Direct for non-root and root vegetables as raw produce; a proxy for root-vegetable-purees, which is not linked.