Overview
Korfali and colleagues measured eleven elements in 33 imported dietary supplement tablets bought from Lebanese pharmacies: iron, zinc, manganese, copper and selenium by handheld XRF, and lead, cadmium, chromium, molybdenum (graphite furnace AAS), arsenic and mercury (ICP-MS) after acid digestion. Each product is reported individually in micrograms per gram of tablet with a daily intake per label dose, compared with US Pharmacopeia limits.
Key numbers
- Lead across all samples: mean 0.11 µg/g, range 0.01 to 0.41 µg/g; highest single value 0.41 µg/g in a mineral tablet with fossil coral (M4) (text p. 6; Table 4).
- Cadmium: mean 1.8 µg/g; highest 2.914 µg/g in a vitamin and mineral tablet (VM1) (text p. 6; Table 4).
- Arsenic: mean 0.26 µg/g; highest 1.621 µg/g in a children’s multivitamin and mineral tablet (VM3) (text p. 9; Table 4).
- Mercury: mean 0.08 µg/g; highest 0.550 µg/g (VM5) (text p. 6; Table 4).
Methods (brief)
Tablets were ground and sieved. XRF was used directly on the powder; for the digestion route, 1 g was digested in hydrogen peroxide and nitric acid (aqua regia if needed). NIST 1573a tomato leaves and NIST 2586 soil gave recoveries of 88 to 101% (Tables 5 and 6). Instrument detection limits are given in µg/L of solution only.
Evidence Fitness
Thirty-three finished products, apparently one analysis each with no replicates or dispersion reported. The text and tables disagree in places: the printed arsenic range (0.012 to 0.16 µg/g) cannot hold given a mean of 0.26 and a maximum of 1.621, and the cadmium exceedance count and the H5 cadmium value differ between text and Table 4. These are finished supplements, so for the vitamin-mineral-premix page this is a proxy (finished product, not premix) and that page is not linked.
Related evidence
- Ingredient class — vitamin/mineral (single, multi-mineral, multi-vitamin/mineral)
- Ingredient class — botanicals/herbs/traditional formulas
- Lead
- Cadmium
- Arsenic
- Mercury
Update history
No substantive edit history is available in this build. The full commit record is available in git.