Overview
Khan and colleagues analysed 15 raw milk samples from street vendors and dairy shops across Peshawar for composition and for zinc, copper, iron, manganese, cadmium and lead by flame atomic absorption. Table 3 gives one value per site in mg/L. The milk had an average of 31.1% added water.
Key numbers
- Lead: mean 1.1162 mg/L, range 0.2794 to 2.2655 mg/L (Results text; Table 3).
- Cadmium: mean 0.1865 mg/L, range 0.0039 to 0.6780 mg/L (Results text; Table 3).
- Highest lead sample: Bara Road, 2.2655 mg/L (Table 3, M11).
Methods (brief)
Fifty millilitres of milk were dried at 70 °C, and 2 g of the dried milk were dry-ashed at 500 °C, dissolved in hydrochloric acid and read by flame atomic absorption with background correction. No detection limits, reference materials or recoveries are reported, and results are expressed per litre without explaining the conversion from dried milk.
Evidence Fitness
Small vendor survey with no analytical quality control. Lead and cadmium levels are orders of magnitude above those usually found in milk, which suggests contamination or calibration problems; treat as low confidence. The milk species is not named. The PDF prints 2021 (volume 12, issue 1), not the manifest year 2024. Raw milk is a proxy for half-and-half, skim milk and semi-skimmed milk, none of which were measured.