Overview
Khodaei and colleagues measured lead and cadmium by graphite furnace AAS, arsenic and mercury by hydride AAS and eight other elements by ICP-OES in 93 barbari, lavash and tafton breads from 93 Isfahan bakeries, and simulated health risks with Latin hypercube sampling. Tables 2 and 3 give minimum, maximum and mean ± SD on a dry-weight basis, overall and per bread type.
Key numbers
- All breads: lead 0.24 ± 0.11 mg/kg (range 0.01 to 0.46), cadmium 0.01 ± 0.006, arsenic 0.03 ± 0.004, mercury 0.01 ± 0.008 mg/kg (Table 2).
- Barbari: lead 0.36 ± 0.04 mg/kg; lavash 0.25 ± 0.02; tafton 0.1 ± 0.04 mg/kg (Table 3).
- Aluminum averaged 29.88 ± 8 mg/kg (Table 2).
Methods (brief)
Bread was oven-dried at 50 °C for 48 hours and digested in duplicate by microwave with nitric acid, hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide. ICP-OES recoveries were 92 to 102% (Table 1); detection limits for the AAS elements are not tabulated and no certified reference material is named.
Evidence Fitness
A reasonably sized bakery survey (one sample per bakery) with dry-weight results. Overall extremes in Table 2 do not match the per-type extremes in Table 3 for arsenic, lead, zinc and mercury, and these are flagged. Arsenic and mercury are totals. Leavened flat breads are a proxy only for chapattis, doughnut, pie-crust, wheat-cereal-biscuits and white-cake, which are not linked. One manifest row called this paper abstract only, but the full published PDF was read.