Overview
Kumar and colleagues bought fresh button mushrooms at 15 vegetable markets across Uttarakhand in the 2021 to 2022 growing season and measured cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, manganese, nickel and zinc by AAS. Markets in the low plains, especially Haridwar, showed the highest levels of most elements. Table 2 gives a mean and SD for each market.
Key numbers
- All markets: cadmium 0.07 ± 0.02, lead 0.05 ± 0.02, chromium 16.21 ± 2.87, nickel 1.05 ± 0.43 mg/kg (Table 2, Mean ± SD row).
- Haridwar market (M1): chromium 20.35 ± 0.16, nickel 1.65 ± 0.10, lead 0.08 ± 0.01 mg/kg (Table 2).
- Cadmium highest at 0.09 ± 0.01 mg/kg in four markets (M3, M9, M10, M11) (Table 2).
Methods (brief)
Mushrooms were washed, oven-dried at 60 °C, powdered and digested with nitric and perchloric acid, then read by AAS in triplicate. Instrument LODs are given in µg/L; recovery is stated as above 98% without a named reference material.
Evidence Fitness
Directly measures button mushrooms sold at retail, the main mushroom in cream-of-mushroom-soup, but whole fresh mushrooms are still a proxy for the soup itself and the record does not link that page. Weaknesses: unlabelled basis, lead and some cadmium values below the sample-equivalent instrument LOD, text and table disagree on the cadmium range, and chromium values are unusually high for this species.