Overview
Lidiková and colleagues grew eight chili pepper cultivars on one plot in southern Slovakia and measured manganese, zinc, chromium, copper, nickel, cadmium, lead and mercury in fruit and soil by AAS. Table 5 gives mean, SD, minimum, maximum and median per cultivar on fresh-weight and dry-matter bases.
Key numbers
- Lead (fresh weight): from not detected (Violet Cables) and 0.04 mg/kg (Chupetinho) to 0.42 mg/kg (Bhut Jolokia White); Sigaretta di Bergamo 0.36 ± 0.04 mg/kg FW (Table 5).
- Cadmium (fresh weight): 0.01 to 0.08 mg/kg across cultivars; Sigaretta di Bergamo 0.06 ± 0.003 mg/kg FW (Table 5).
- Mercury (fresh weight): about 0.00003 mg/kg, for example Cayenne Long Slim 0.00003 ± 0.00001 mg/kg FW (Table 5).
- Soil total cadmium 1.64 mg/kg (abstract).
Methods (brief)
Microwave digestion with nitric acid; flame AAS for manganese, zinc, copper, chromium and nickel, Zeeman graphite furnace AAS for cadmium and lead, and an AMA-254 analyzer for mercury. Recoveries 91.6 to 106.2 percent on known solutions; no certified reference material.
Evidence Fitness
A single plot with soil cadmium above the national limit, eight cultivars and full summary statistics. Detection limit units conflict between text and Table 1. Hot chili cultivars are a proxy for green-bell-pepper, not the same food, so that page is not linked.