Kongta et al. 2023 — Aluminum in noodle products from Thailand

Kongta and colleagues measured aluminum in four commonly consumed noodle-product groups sold in Thailand and assessed exposure from noodle consumption. The study collected 80 samples across rice stick noodles, egg noodles, wide rice noodles, and Thai rice noodles from Bangkok and four regional provinces. The paper reports aluminum only; it does not measure lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, or chromium.

Key numbers

Table 3 reports aluminum concentrations in noodle samples on both wet-weight (mg/kg ww) and dry-weight (mg/kg dw) bases:

Additional source-reported values:

• Abstract range across noodles: not detected to 630 mg/kg.
• Table 3 defines ND as below the LOD of 1.95 µg/kg.
• Table 4 source-study ranges were rice stick noodles ND-623, wide rice noodles ND-244, Thai rice noodles ND-117, and egg noodles ND.
• The percentages of noodle products not complying with Codex GSFA and Thailand food standards for aluminum-containing food additives were 95% for rice stick noodles, 55% for wide rice noodles, and 30% for Thai rice noodles; no detectable Al concentration was found in egg noodles.
• Boiling rice stick noodles reduced Al concentration by about 72% on a wet-weight basis; the authors state cooked rice stick noodles had about 3.7 times lower Al than raw samples.
• In Table 6, the highest JECFA-PTWI HQ for rice stick noodles was 3.900 in the 3-5.9 year worst-case scenario; the highest EFSA-TWI HQ for rice stick noodles was 7.800 in the same scenario. The highest EFSA-TWI HQ in the full table was 17.970 for Thai rice noodles in the 3-5.9 year worst-case scenario.

Methods (brief)

The study used multi-stage stratified sampling to collect 20 samples from each of four noodle groups. Bangkok contributed nine samples of each noodle type, Nakhon Ratchasima four, Chiang Mai three, and Chonburi plus Nakhon Si Thammarat two each. Noodle samples were homogenized with deionized water at 1:1 w/w, wet-digested with concentrated nitric acid using closed-vessel thermal heating, and measured by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry using a PerkinElmer PinAAcle 900Z. Method validation covered working range, linearity, detection and quantification limits, spiked recovery, repeatability, HorRat, and interlaboratory comparison. Moisture was measured by AOAC 945.15 to convert wet-weight and dry-weight aluminum concentrations.

Implications

This source contributes Thailand-market aluminum occurrence evidence for rice-based noodle products and egg noodles. It is directly routeable for rice noodles and broader rice-based/wheat-based pasta-noodle rows, but the wet-weight and dry-weight bases should remain separate. The aluminum finding should not be generalized to other metals because no other HMTc analytes were measured.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• noodles
• rice
• egg-noodles
• pasta
• rice-noodles
• pasta-rice-based
• pasta-wheat-based
• other-grain-products
• aluminum

Verification notes

• PDF text extracted with pdftotext -layout; the extracted text contained the title/DOI page, methods, Tables 1-6, Figure 1 text, conclusion, and references.
• DOI verified from the first page as 10.3390/foods12213960; DOI, raw-handle, and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• Table 3 concentration values, Table 4 source-study ranges, and Table 6 headline HQ values were checked against the extracted text. Units were preserved as printed (mg/kg ww, mg/kg dw, µg/kg, mg/kg bw/week); no conversions were made.
• Speciation is not applicable to this aluminum-only paper. It does not report Pb, Cd, As, Hg, MeHg, iAs, Cr, Cr(III), or Cr(VI).
• The source mentions that high aluminum concentrations were found in samples with labels or FDA serial numbers, but this page reports only product-group statistics and does not attach brand or producer identity to contamination values.
• Frontmatter product and ingredient slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md; no new slug was invented.

Page history

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