Overview
Mirosławski and Paukszto measured cadmium, chromium, nickel, and lead in Polish pharmacy-market peppermint-leaf and chamomile-blossom herbal preparations, then repeated the measurements on herb material remaining after preparation of 200 ml infusions. The study is occurrence evidence for dried medicinal-botanical raw material and extraction evidence for prepared herbal infusions. It reports total elemental Cd, Cr, Ni, and Pb only; no speciation beyond the element level was performed.
Key numbers
All concentrations below are preserved in the paper’s units. Tables 4 and 5 report mg kg−1 for dried herbal material and post-infusion residue; Table 6 reports percent extraction into infusion; Table 7 reports μg/daily for one 200 ml infusion prepared from one sachet.
| Matrix | Cd | Cr | Ni | Pb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chamomile blossom, raw material average (Table 4) | 0.22 ± 0.06 mg kg−1 | 1.27 ± 0.31 mg kg−1 | 2.29 ± 0.30 mg kg−1 | 0.62 ± 0.18 mg kg−1 |
| Chamomile blossom, raw material range across five producers (Table 4) | 0.18-0.32 mg kg−1 | 1.05-1.81 mg kg−1 | 2.05-2.81 mg kg−1 | 0.44-0.85 mg kg−1 |
| Peppermint leaves, raw material average (Table 4) | 0.58 ± 0.14 mg kg−1 | 1.41 ± 0.53 mg kg−1 | 2.38 ± 0.85 mg kg−1 | 0.82 ± 0.24 mg kg−1 |
| Peppermint leaves, raw material range across five producers (Table 4) | 0.46-0.73 mg kg−1 | 0.92-2.15 mg kg−1 | 1.15-3.48 mg kg−1 | 0.46-1.11 mg kg−1 |
| Chamomile blossom, material remaining after infusion average (Table 5) | 0.19 ± 0.05 mg kg−1 | 0.98 ± 0.24 mg kg−1 | 0.94 ± 0.12 mg kg−1 | 0.59 ± 0.16 mg kg−1 |
| Peppermint leaves, material remaining after infusion average (Table 5) | 0.50 ± 0.12 mg kg−1 | 0.89 ± 0.30 mg kg−1 | 0.74 ± 0.32 mg kg−1 | 0.77 ± 0.22 mg kg−1 |
| Chamomile blossom, extraction into infusion average (Table 6) | 16.0 ± 2.85% | 28.1 ± 1.16% | 58.1 ± 1.98% | 6.2 ± 1.61% |
| Peppermint leaves, extraction into infusion average (Table 6) | 13.9 ± 1.56% | 35.9 ± 2.80% | 70.1 ± 4.74% | 5.7 ± 1.86% |
| Chamomile blossom, daily dose from one infusion (Table 7) | 0.07 μg/daily | 0.07 μg/daily | 1.52 μg/daily | 0.08 μg/daily |
| Peppermint leaves, daily dose from one infusion (Table 7) | 0.16 μg/daily | 1.01 μg/daily | 1.93 μg/daily | 0.08 μg/daily |
The Results section states that the infusion concentrations were at the method LOD, with LODs printed as Cd 0.05 mg kg−1, Cr 0.15 mg kg−1, Ni 0.15 mg kg−1, and Pb 0.20 mg kg−1. The authors state that cadmium exceeded the WHO medicinal-plant standard in all peppermint-leaf preparations and in one chamomile-blossom preparation; lead was below the WHO level they cite.
Methods (brief)
The authors purchased five peppermint-leaf preparations and five chamomile-blossom preparations from Polish pharmacies; each producer was represented by three package-level samples, and all products were brewing bags. Raw herbs were mineralized as 0.3 g portions with concentrated nitric acid in a Magnum II microwave oven. Infusions were prepared according to package directions by adding 200 ml purified boiled water to approximately 2 g herb, cooling for 10 minutes, straining under vacuum through a G3 fritted-glass funnel, drying the separated phase at 20 °C to solid mass, and mineralizing it by the same procedure. Cd, Cr, Ni, and Pb were measured by flame AAS with deuterium background correction on a Carl-Zeiss Jena AAS-3; accuracy was checked with INCT-MPH-2 Mixed Polish Herbs, with recoveries of 93.5% for Cd, 105.3% for Cr, 93.6% for Ni, and 99.1% for Pb. The paper reports total elemental Cd, Cr, Ni, and Pb; no Cr-VI or other species are reported.
Implications
Certification: The page contributes Polish/EU occurrence evidence for dried herbal-botanical raw material and product-preparation evidence for herbal-botanical infusions. Because the paper reports both raw material and extracted daily dose from a prepared infusion, synthesis should keep dried-product and prepared-infusion bases separate.
Courses: The study is a compact teaching case for basis discipline: the raw-herb table, post-infusion residue table, extraction-percent table, and daily-dose table are all valid source facts but should not be pooled as if they were the same matrix.
App: The source can support the herbal-botanicals and dried-herbs contamination profiles for Cd, Cr, Ni, and Pb, with a Polish market note and an infusion-transfer qualifier.
Wiki pages this source may touch
- Herbal/Botanical Infusions
- Ingredient class — botanicals/herbs/traditional formulas
- Herbal botanicals
- Dried Herbs
- Cadmium
- Chromium
- Nickel
- Lead
Verification notes
- Identity checks on 2026-06-09: DOI
10.1007/s12011-017-1072-5, raw handleMFK_10.1007-s12011-017-1072-5, and cite-keymiroslawski2017-polish-medicinal-plants-infusionsreturned no existing source page hits before creation. - The producer names printed in the Materials section are not reproduced because they identify sampled products. Values are reported by product form and producer number/range only, preserving the brand firewall.
- All Key numbers values were re-checked against
/tmp/hmi-june9-002.txtextracted withpdftotext -layout, including Tables 4, 5, 6, and 7. Units are copied as printed (mg kg−1,%, andμg/daily) and not converted. - Speciation check: Cd, Cr, Ni, and Pb are total elemental measurements by AAS; the source does not report Cr-VI.
- The source’s WHO comparison line prints permissible levels for arsenic, cadmium, and lead as
1.0, 0.3, and 10.0 (μg kg−1)while discussing dry-weight medicinal-plant raw material. The page records the authors’ exceedance statement but does not use that line to derive any HMTc threshold or consumer-facing interpretation. matrices: [medicinal-plants, dried-herbs, herbal-infusion]uses corpus-established descriptive matrix terms because the canonical examples do not have a single term for pharmacy-market brewing-bag medicinal herbs plus their prepared infusion.
Update history
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