Overview
This study bought pork and beef at a market in Okpuno, Anambra State, each month for three months and measured cadmium, copper, lead, zinc and iron by AAS, then estimated intakes and risks. Monthly differences were not significant. Lead was highest in January pork.
Key numbers
- Pork, three-month mean: cadmium “0.04 ± 0.05”, lead “0.09 ± 0.07” mg/kg (Table 1, p. 70).
- Pork lead by month: 0.1475 (January), 0.061 (February), 0.058 (March) mg/kg (Table 1).
- Beef, three-month mean: cadmium “0.04 ± 0.04”, lead “0.08 ± 0.08” mg/kg (Table 2).
Methods (brief)
Samples were washed, oven-dried at 105 °C, blended and digested with nitric and perchloric acids, then analyzed by AAS (Varian AA240). Each month’s value is the mean of two replicates. No detection limits, reference materials or recoveries are reported.
Evidence Fitness
Very small (six samples per meat) with weak QA and no stated basis. The iron and zinc values are far below normal meat levels, which casts doubt on the whole data set, and the three-month SDs do not fit the monthly means. The year is not given. Market pork of unspecified cut is a proxy for pork-chop (no chop was measured), so that page is not linked.