Mohammed et al. 2021 — Copper, cadmium, and lead in noodles from Salah Al-din markets

Mohammed and colleagues measured mycotoxins, fungi, and selected heavy metals in ten noodle types collected from markets in Salah Al-din Governorate, Iraq. The heavy-metal occurrence portion reports per-sample copper and cadmium values in Figures 4 and 5 (n=10) plus the abstracted ranges, and a censored Pb result of less than 0.1 ppm in all ten samples. The paper reports total-element Cu, Cd, and Pb only; it does not report arsenic, mercury, chromium, or metal speciation.

Key numbers

Per-sample bar values are reported in Figures 4 (Cu), 5 (Cd), and 6 (Pb) and were used to compute the distribution statistics above. The source identifies samples by flavor or product descriptor; one descriptor embeds a brand identifier, so per-sample values are not tabulated against descriptors here (Part 12).

Methods (brief)

Ten noodle types were collected from Salah Al-din Governorate markets with three replicates. The heavy-metal method says 10 duplicate noodle samples were dried in an electric oven, ashed in a muffle furnace at 600 C to stable weight, taken up in 5 mL of 5% HNO3, filtered through Whatman No. 1, and analyzed for Cd, Cu, and Pb by atomic absorption spectrophotometry using a Shimadzo-6200 instrument. The source reports total elements only and does not give LOD or LOQ values in the extracted text.

Implications

This source contributes Iraq-market noodle occurrence ranges plus per-sample distribution statistics (n=10) for total Cu and total Cd, and a censored-below-0.1 ppm result for total Pb. It is useful for routing to broad noodle and wheat-based pasta product pages. It is not suitable for iAs, MeHg, or Cr-VI routing because those analytes were not measured.

Verification notes

• PDF text extracted with pdftotext -layout; the title page, DOI, abstract, sampling description, heavy-metal method, and Section 3.3 were readable. Figures 4 (Cu), 5 (Cd), and 6 (Pb) were re-read directly from the PDF for per-sample bar values.
• DOI verified from the page header as 10.1088/1742-6596/1879/2/022006; DOI, raw handle MFK_mohammed2021, and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• All metal ranges and per-sample distribution statistics in Key numbers were checked against the abstract, Section 3.3, and Figures 4-6. Units are preserved as ppm; no conversion to mg/kg or ppb was performed. The figure-derived per-sample values are: Cu 0.82, 0.65, 1.23, 0.80, 1.21, 0.86, 0.76, 0.50, 0.98, 1.08; Cd 0.14, 0.16, 0.19, 0.08, 0.31, 0.09, 0.16, 0.05, 0.12, 0.10; Pb all <0.1 ppm.
• Speciation: Cu, Cd, and Pb are reported as total elements. The paper does not report arsenic, mercury, chromium, or metal speciation.
• Brand firewall: the source’s Section 2.1 sample list contains 10 flavor or product descriptors, one of which embeds a brand identifier. The wiki page reports the range and distribution statistics across the 10 samples but does not pair per-sample values with their descriptors, so no brand attribution attaches to any contamination value (Part 12).
• Frontmatter product and ingredient slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md; no new slug was invented.
• 2026-06-09 autonomous audit: GPT-style 5-check audit returned PROMOTE with one ⚠️ on figure readability. Independent verification confirmed Figures 4-6 do show readable per-sample bar values; Key numbers, Implications, and Verification notes updated to add per-sample distribution statistics for Cu (n=10) and Cd (n=10) and to clarify the Part 12 reasoning for not pairing per-sample values with descriptors. Numerical fidelity, slug vocabulary, speciation/methods, and wiki/HMTc firewall checks all clean.

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.