Kiczorowski et al. 2022 - lead and cadmium in raw and fermented vegetables
Kiczorowski and coauthors compared raw and fermented vegetables for nutrients, minerals, vitamins, phenols, lead, and cadmium. The paper is directly useful for processing-effect evidence because the same vegetable types were compared before and after fermentation. It does not support the mineral-water row named in the fetched filename.
Key numbers
Table 5 reports Pb and Cd in fresh matter. Raw vegetables contained Pb from 4.28 ug/g fresh matter in pepper to 8.28 ug/g fresh matter in carrot, and Cd from 0.031 ug/g fresh matter in red beet to 0.057 ug/g fresh matter in cucumber. The authors report that fermentation reduced Pb most strongly in carrot, cucumber, and red beet, with an average 18.5% lower Pb content than raw material in those vegetables. Cd reductions were smaller; carrot, pepper, and red beet showed the highest Cd decline, averaging 12% lower than raw vegetables.
Extracted Table 5 examples:
| Matrix | Pb | Cd |
|---|---|---|
| Broccoli, raw | 4.39 +/- 0.71 ug/g fresh matter | 0.041 +/- 0.37 ug/g fresh matter |
| Broccoli, fermented | 3.78 +/- 0.23 ug/g fresh matter | 0.039 +/- 0.64 ug/g fresh matter |
| Carrot, raw | 8.28 +/- 0.51 ug/g fresh matter | 0.043 +/- 0.26 ug/g fresh matter |
| Carrot, fermented | 6.73 +/- 0.34 ug/g fresh matter | 0.038 +/- 0.44 ug/g fresh matter |
| Cucumber, raw | 5.30 +/- 0.45 ug/g fresh matter | 0.057 +/- 0.53 ug/g fresh matter |
| Cucumber, fermented | 4.32 +/- 0.18 ug/g fresh matter | 0.054 +/- 0.24 ug/g fresh matter |
Methods (brief)
The experiment used five vegetables from Polish vegetable farms: broccoli, carrot, cucumber, pepper, and red beet. Raw and fermented forms were analyzed in four repetitions per vegetable combination. The paper reports heavy metals as Pb and Cd without speciation issues; basis is fresh matter.
Implications
Certification: Useful as processing evidence for vegetable fermentation effects on Pb and Cd, but not as a pooled benchmark for a single product row without separating vegetable type and basis.
Courses: Demonstrates that fermentation can change measured heavy-metal content along with nutrient composition.
App: Supports a processing qualifier for fermented vegetables after synthesis.
Wiki pages this source may touch
- non-root-vegetables
- root-tuber-vegetables
- broccoli
- carrot
- cucumber
- green-bell-pepper
- beet
- lead
- cadmium
Verification notes
The source reports ug/g fresh matter for Pb and Cd. The Table 5 Cd standard-deviation formatting appears unusually large relative to the mean in the extracted PDF text; the values were preserved as printed and should be rechecked against the rendered table during audit.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 50ec0f0 | 2026-05-30 | ingest auto-fetched 2026-05-30 2145 batch 1: 10 source pages |