Overview
Nwoke and colleagues measured nine elements by flame AAS in three brands each of cheese, yoghurt and butter bought in Enugu State, Nigeria, in January 2019, and computed health risk indices. Lead was not detected in any product. Cadmium was found in all nine.
Key numbers
- Cheese cadmium: 0.0225 ± 0.0007, 0.0297 ± 0.0055 and 0.0257 ± 0.0021 mg/kg for the three brands; lead ND in all three (Table 3).
- Butter cadmium 0.0050 to 0.1200 mg/kg; yoghurt cadmium 0.0197 to 0.0630 mg/kg (Table 3).
- Chromium 0.6670 mg/kg in one cheese brand, ND elsewhere (Table 3).
Methods (brief)
Two grams of each composite were digested with nitric and perchloric acids and read by flame AAS. Spike recoveries were 87.5% for lead and 100.38% for cadmium. The stated LOD of 0.00001 ppm is implausibly low for flame AAS. No reference material was used.
Evidence Fitness
One composite per brand, so this is a thin retail snapshot. The journal has no DOI and its peer review is unverified, so it does not replace DOI-registered dairy studies. No cheese variety is stated, so the cheese is generic and is a proxy for monterey-jack-cheese and swiss-cheese, which are not linked. The text misassigns some butter values to the wrong metals; Table 3 is used as printed.