Overview
Naghipour and colleagues collected 40 bread samples of four common types from Rasht bakeries in 2013 and measured arsenic, cadmium, lead, chromium, nickel and cobalt by ICP-OES on a dry-weight basis, then estimated daily intake. Arsenic was below detection in every sample. The abstract and the discussion give conflicting cadmium and lead means per bread type.
Key numbers
- Lead, per the Discussion: Barbari 0.64, Sangak 0.73, Lavash 0.33 and baguette 0.9 mg/kg dry weight (Discussion, p. 3).
- Cadmium, per the Discussion: 0.13, 0.07, 0.02 and 0.09 mg/kg dry weight in the same order (Discussion, p. 3).
- The abstract instead lists Barbari cadmium 0.73 and lead 0.07 mg/kg (Abstract, p. 1).
Methods (brief)
Bread was air-dried, ground with titanium knives and digested with nitric and perchloric acids on a hot plate; ICP-OES (Spectro Arcos). Instrument detection limits are given in ppb of solution. Duplicate analyses; no reference material, recovery or blank data.
Evidence Fitness
Internally inconsistent: abstract and discussion means for cadmium and lead disagree, the results list six ranges for five metals, and figure scales do not match the stated means. Samples per bread type are not given. Plain bread is a proxy for doughnut, pie-crust, wheat-cereal-biscuits and white-cake, so those pages are not linked. The PDF does not print the DOI.