Overview
This conference paper measured lead, cadmium and arsenic in boiled blood cockle flesh from a Kelantan wet market, then tested whether soaking the flesh with lemon or mango peel powder lowered the metals. The starting flesh exceeded WHO and Malaysian limits for lead. Peel treatments removed roughly 40 to 60 percent of lead and up to all of the cadmium.
Key numbers
- Initial boiled blood cockle flesh: lead 5.605 mg/kg, cadmium 1.770 mg/kg, arsenic 0.579 mg/kg (Table 2, p. 3).
- After 0.3 g lemon peel for 30 minutes: lead 2.290, cadmium 0.996, arsenic 0.369 mg/kg (Section 3.3, p. 4).
- After 0.2 g mango peel: lead 2.369, cadmium 1.194, arsenic 0.089 mg/kg (Section 3.3, p. 5).
Methods (brief)
About 2 g of flesh was digested in nitric acid on a hot plate and measured by flame and graphite furnace atomic absorption, before and after soaking in peel suspensions at different doses, times and temperatures. No detection limits, replicates or reference materials are reported.
Evidence Fitness
A removal experiment with a single initial value per metal and no sample size or QA, so it gives only weak occurrence evidence for blood cockle. Arsenic is total arsenic, with no speciation. Blood cockle is a proxy for the clams in clam chowder; the clam chowder page is not linked. The peel-soaking treatment is a laboratory procedure, not a household practice.