Overview
Khan and colleagues analysed eight biscuit and cookie samples from Quetta by ICP-MS for aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel, lead, titanium and zinc. Lead and cadmium were low. Most arsenic results are printed as negative numbers, meaning below the blank.
Key numbers
- Lead 0.0214 to 0.0596 ppm across eight samples (Table 01, p. 11).
- Cadmium 0.0005 to 0.0064 ppm, with one sample printed as 0.0000 (Table 01).
- Arsenic printed as -0.0070 to -0.0003 ppm in seven samples and 0.0019 ppm in one (Table 01).
Methods (brief)
Samples were briefly oven-dried, ground, digested with nitric, perchloric and sulfuric acid and analysed by ICP-MS (NexION 300Q) against calibration standards with blanks. No detection limits or reference materials are reported. The results table is an image and was read from the rendered page.
Evidence Fitness
Eight single samples, no LOD or CRM, negative arsenic readings and a copper text-table mismatch. Peer review is unverified, and the printed Zenodo DOI is not a Crossref DOI. For wheat-cereal-biscuits this is a proxy: it measures sweet biscuits and cookies, not wheat cereal biscuits, so that page is not linked.