Overview
Oyekunle and colleagues measured arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, copper, manganese, lead and zinc by flame AAS in 18 packaged soft-drink and malt-drink products bought in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and compared glass bottles, plastic bottles and cans. Results are per litre of drink. The products are identified only by letter codes, so cola, lemon-lime or other flavor types cannot be told apart.
Key numbers
- Arsenic 0.16 to 0.53 mg/L, cadmium 0.27 to 1.28 mg/L and lead 0.21 to 0.63 mg/L across the 18 products (Table 2, p. 20).
- Highest lead: product coded PCP (plastic bottle) 0.63 ± 0.03 mg/L; lowest: MAC (can) 0.21 ± 0.02 mg/L (Table 2).
- Plastic-packed drinks had significantly higher totals than glass for arsenic, cobalt, manganese, lead and zinc (t-test, Table 6).
Methods (brief)
20 mL of drink digested with nitric and perchloric acid on a hotplate; flame AAS (PG 990). Spike recoveries 87.6 to 98.2%; no certified reference material and no detection limits reported.
Evidence Fitness
One value per product set with triplicate SD, no detection limits and no reference material. Cadmium and lead at several tenths of a milligram per litre are far above levels usually reported for soft drinks, so analytical quality is uncertain. This is a finished-drink survey: it is a proxy for soft-drink bases, sports-drink bases, lemon-lime soft drink and diet cola, none of which it measures as such. One copper value (CFB 0.10 mg/L) conflicts with the range the text states.
Related evidence
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