Kumar et al. 2022 - Lead in Bangladeshi agricultural foods

Kumar et al. compiled published lead concentration data for agricultural foods commonly consumed in Bangladesh and assessed non-cancer and cancer risk. The source is a summary-rich literature survey, not a new sampling campaign, but it reports routeable food concentration values by commodity group, district, and food item. It is useful for Bangladesh geographic context and for source-pool sensitivity review, not for silent pooling into US-market benchmark rows.

Key numbers

The paper standardizes Pb concentration values to ug/g fresh weight unless otherwise noted.

Commodity-group means and prominent food-item values:

District-level signals reported by the source:

The authors report that rice, zucchini, tesla gourd, sponge gourd, okra, drumstick lib, chili, and cabbage may pose non-cancer health risks with THQ values above 1, while fruits and pulses did not pose non-cancer health risks in their assessment.

Methods (brief)

The authors conducted a literature survey using combinations of Pb/lead, Bangladesh, and food-category terms for cereals, vegetables, fruits, and pulses. Included papers had to report Pb concentrations in text or tabular format for agricultural products in Bangladesh. Values reported on dry-weight or other bases were standardized by the authors to fresh weight using moisture-content assumptions, and health risks were estimated using Bangladesh food-ingestion rates and US EPA methods.

Implications

This source provides broad Bangladesh-market lead context across cereals, pulses, fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, and turmeric. It is summary-only but not context-only: the reported means, ranges, and district summaries can contribute to evidence pools where literature-survey summary statistics are admitted with the source’s conversion assumptions preserved. It should be excluded from primary US-market product standards unless governance explicitly admits Bangladesh-market sensitivity evidence.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• rice
• wheat
• maize
• lentils
• fruits
• mango
• banana
• guava
• pineapple
• cabbage
• vegetables
• non-root-vegetables
• turmeric
• mushrooms
• rice-bulk-grain
• cereal-products
• legumes-pulses-other
• fresh-fruit
• non-root-vegetables
• spices
• wild-mushrooms
• lead

Verification notes

Evidence Fitness: routeable for Bangladesh agricultural-food lead occurrence and geographic context, with source-reported fresh-weight summary values and the authors’ cross-source conversions. Not routeable as sample-level primary data from a single laboratory campaign; not a US-market benchmark pool source without explicit governance rationale. The PDF first page provides title, authors, journal, year, and DOI. The open-access statement identifies CC BY 4.0. The PDF SHA-256 at ingest was 501e513e2d32e8d572ee7ee00a85bf9c0483b10a8286af79f3f182a3c8e9c5cd.

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.