Overview
Okareh and colleagues identified the five herbal-extract flavoured alcoholic drinks most consumed by young adults at Ibadan motor parks, bought them there, and measured phytochemicals and six metals by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. Table 3 gives triplicate means for lead, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, zinc and iron. Lead (2.13 to 4.70 mg/L) and cadmium (0.06 to 0.07 mg/L) exceeded the drinking-water values the authors used for comparison.
Key numbers
- Lead: 2.13 ± 0.01 mg/L (Sample 1) to 4.70 ± 0.50 mg/L (Sample 5) (Table 3).
- Cadmium: 0.06 to 0.07 mg/L in all five drinks (Table 3).
- Chromium: 0.00 (undetected, Sample 1) to 0.35 ± 0.02 mg/L (Sample 3) (Table 3).
Methods (brief)
A 50 mL portion was concentrated with nitric acid, filtered and read by flame AAS against standard solutions, in triplicate, following AOAC methods. A reference material was reportedly used, but no recoveries or detection limits are given.
Evidence Fitness
Five drinks, one lot each, with no detection limits or recovery data. Lead at several mg/L is unusually high for a beverage and the uniform cadmium values sit close to typical flame AAS limits, so the values should be treated with caution. These are herbal-flavoured spirit drinks (34.0 to 51.5% alcohol), a proxy for whiskey only, so the whiskey page is not linked. Results are per litre and are not comparable with mg/kg food values.
Related evidence
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