Overview
Nikolić and colleagues bought ten common vegetables at three Novi Sad green markets in autumn 2011, two samples per species per market from different nearby localities, and measured cadmium, lead, chromium, nickel and four macroelements in the dried edible parts by flame AAS. Results vary widely between localities, and spinach had the highest mean heavy metal levels. All values are on a dry-matter basis.
Key numbers
- Broccoli cadmium: 2.37 ± 0.16 µg/g DM at locality I, 0.02 to 0.30 µg/g elsewhere; lead 0.01 to 6.69 µg/g DM (Table 3).
- Tomato lead 9.31 ± 0.25 µg/g DM (locality I); spinach lead up to 9.07 ± 0.32 µg/g DM (Table 3).
- Spinach chromium up to 7.72 ± 0.93 and nickel up to 5.37 ± 1.92 µg/g DM (Table 4).
Methods (brief)
Edible parts were air-dried, oven-dried at 80 °C, milled and digested in closed microwave vessels, then analysed by flame AAS in triplicate. No reference material, recovery or formal detection limit is reported; values below 0.01 µg/g are printed as “<0.01”. The micro sign in the units is lost in the PDF text layer.
Evidence Fitness
Sixty market samples with locality detail but one sample per locality and no reference material. Flame AAS lead and cadmium values this high should be read cautiously. Broccoli and the other non-root vegetables are measured directly (dry basis). For broccoli-cheese-soup the data are only an ingredient proxy for broccoli-cheese-soup, which is not linked.