Toxic Elements in Commercial Infant Food, Estimated Dietary Intake, and Risk Assessment in Poland

Overview

This monitoring study reports Pb, Cd, total As, and total Hg in approximately 1,000 infant-food samples collected across Poland from 2009 to 2013, with all products analyzed as sold. The dataset covers infant formulae, rice and non-rice cereal foods, biscuits, ready-to-eat meals, fish-based foods, fruit desserts, juices, and infant teas. The highest arsenic signals were in rice gruel and fish-based infant foods, the highest mercury signal was in fish-based infant foods, cadmium was most prominent in vegetable meals and some cereal products, and lead exposure estimates approached or exceeded EFSA reference-dose comparators in the authors’ infant diet scenarios.

Key numbers

Concentrations are mg/kg as sold. Tables 1-4 report lower-bound, middle-bound, and upper-bound statistics for left-censored data; this page uses middle-bound means as the compact category comparison. Sample counts differ by analyte because not every product was analyzed for every element.

Source-reported high points and risk-assessment values:

• Pb: infant formula and follow-on formula mean MB 0.0051 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.0099 mg/kg; biscuits mean MB 0.0126 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.0282 mg/kg; rice gruel mean MB 0.0083 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.0146 mg/kg. The discussion reports a highest pure-rice-gruel Pb value of 0.120 mg/kg.
• Cd: vegetable meals mean MB 0.0096 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.0174 mg/kg; biscuits mean MB 0.0066 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.0109 mg/kg; wheat gruel mean MB 0.0047 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.0090 mg/kg; rice gruel mean MB 0.0041 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.0119 mg/kg. The discussion reports a pure-rice-gruel Cd value of 0.0490 mg/kg, above the source-cited 0.040 mg/kg EU maximum level for cereal-based infant foods at the time.
• tAs: rice gruel mean MB 0.0595 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.1404 mg/kg; fish-based infant foods mean MB 0.0666 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.1781 mg/kg. The discussion reports the highest tAs values as 0.297 mg/kg in rice gruel and 0.195 mg/kg in a cod-fish-and-vegetables dinner.
• tHg: fish-based infant foods mean MB 0.0063 mg/kg, P90 MB 0.0127 mg/kg; other categories were at or below 0.0009 mg/kg mean MB. The discussion reports the highest mercury value as 0.0185 mg/kg in a vegetable-and-fish infant dinner.
• Dietary exposure estimates from the abstract and Results: mean Pb exposure 0.09 to 0.53 microgram/kg bw/day for 3- and 12-month infants; mean Cd exposure 0.02 to 0.39-0.4 microgram/kg bw/day; mean tAs exposure 0.11 to 0.99 microgram/kg bw/day; mean organic-Hg worst-case exposure 0.01 to 0.08 microgram/kg bw/day.

Methods (brief)

The National Institute of Public Health - National Institute of Hygiene coordinated a 2009-2013 monitoring programme in which Polish sanitary-epidemiological stations sampled infant foods from retail markets in all provinces. Sampling followed Commission Regulation No. 333/2007 for official control of Pb, Cd, Hg, inorganic tin, 3-MCPD, and benzo(a)pyrene in foodstuffs. All products were analyzed as sold, without reconstitution.

Lead and cadmium were determined by atomic absorption spectrometry after either microwave digestion according to EN 14083:2003 or dry ashing based on EN 14082:2003, using FAAS after APDC extraction or GFAAS. Arsenic was determined by hydride-generation AAS after dry ashing according to EN 14546:2005. Mercury was determined by cold-vapour AAS either directly or after pressure digestion according to EN 13806:2002. The paper reports total arsenic and total mercury only; it does not speciate inorganic arsenic, methylmercury, or inorganic mercury in the samples.

Participating laboratories were accredited to EN ISO/IEC 17025:2005. Quality assurance included certified reference materials, internal and external quality procedures, and interlaboratory proficiency tests including NIPH-NIH, FAPAS, and EU-RL-HM/JRC-IRMM programmes. The paper does not provide individual LOD or LOQ values; it reports left-censored statistics using the EFSA lower-bound, middle-bound, and upper-bound substitution approach.

Implications

Standards work: This source contributes a broad Polish-market occurrence dataset for infant formulae, infant cereals, baby snacks, ready-to-eat infant meals, fish-containing baby foods, fruit products, juices, and infant teas. For the gap-targeted non-rice dry baby cereal cell, the directly relevant groups are wheat gruel and mixed cereals; rice gruel is separately relevant to the rice-based dry baby cereal cell.

Courses: Useful for teaching why infant-food monitoring needs both product-form stratification and metal speciation discipline. The same source reports low total mercury in most cereal and formula categories but a distinct fish-food mercury signal, and it reports total arsenic without inorganic-arsenic speciation.

App: Supports Polish-market occurrence context for infant cereals and several ready-to-eat baby-food categories, with as-sold concentrations rather than prepared-as-fed concentrations.

Microbiome: Not addressed in this study.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• Lead
• Cadmium
• Arsenic, Total
• Mercury, Total
• Infant Formula Powder
• Soy-based infant formula
• Baby Cereals Dry
• Rice
• Wheat
• Non Rice Grains
• Vegetables
• Meat and Poultry
• Fish
• Fruit
• Herbal botanicals
• Infant Formula Powder
• Infant Formula, Powder (Soy-Based)
• Baby Cereals / Grain Products, Dry (Rice-Based)
• Baby Cereals / Grain Products, Dry (Non-Rice)
• Teething & Snacks (Non-Rice)
• Teething & Snacks (Rice-Based)
• Non-Root Vegetable Purees
• Root-Vegetable Purees
• Meat and Poultry Purees
• Mixed Meals, Non-Rice
• Mixed Meals, Rice-Containing
• Fish-Containing Baby Foods
• Fruit Purees
• Fruit Juice (Not Canned)
• Herbal/Botanical Infusions
• Tea Infusions
• Commission Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 setting maximum levels for certain contaminants in foodstuffs
• EFSA — Lead in Food (2010), No-Threshold Position
• EFSA — Tolerable Weekly Intake for Cadmium, 2.5 µg/kg b.w./week
• EFSA — Arsenic in Food (2009), No-PTWI Position
• EFSA — Methylmercury Tolerable Weekly Intake (1.3 µg/kg b.w./week)
• JECFA — Lead Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (Withdrawn 2010)
• JECFA — Provisional Tolerable Monthly Intake for Cadmium, 25 µg/kg b.w./month
• JECFA inorganic arsenic BMDL₀.₅ (lower-limit benchmark dose)
• JECFA — Methylmercury Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (1.6 µg/kg b.w./week)

Verification notes

• Ingested 2026-05-18 from the gap-driven auto-fetch queue. The same PDF was downloaded four times for baby-cereals-dry-non-rice Cd, iAs, tAs, and tHg wishlist cells; all four files have identical SHA-256 7d521247d2ced1b880a35d0648b4362666a3e8d0b813ce99bb5aac6fb90a74f8. This page uses the Cd-targeted ingested path as raw_path and treats the other three paths as duplicate fetches for the same DOI.
• DOI identity check found no existing wiki source page for 10.15244/pjoes/59306; matches were only reference-list citations in other source markdown and wishlist-audit rows.
• Speciation: frontmatter uses tAs and tHg because the paper measures total arsenic and total mercury. The exposure section discusses methylmercury and inorganic mercury as risk-assessment assumptions, not measured species.
• Product routing follows the source’s product groups. Rice gruel and milk/rice-based products route to rice-based baby cereal context; wheat gruel and mixed cereals route to non-rice baby cereal context; biscuits route to teething/snack context; ready-to-eat vegetable, vegetable-meat, fish, fruit, and juice categories route to the closest infant-food product pages.

Update history

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