Overview
Pasqualone and colleagues reviewed physical, chemical and biological hazards in biscuits, including heavy metals, mineral oil hydrocarbons, acrylamide, mycotoxins and pesticide residues, and how processing and packaging can reduce them. The heavy-metal section summarises cadmium and lead from national surveys and nickel from Indian and Nigerian studies.
Key numbers
- Table 1 compiles lead and cadmium in biscuits from other surveys; quoted values (for example cadmium 0.02 to 0.03 mg/kg in Nigerian biscuits) belong to those primary papers (Section 3, pp. 6-7).
- The review quotes EU cereal grain limits of 0.10 mg/kg cadmium and 0.20 mg/kg lead and the EFSA nickel TDI of 13 µg/kg body weight (pp. 6-7).
Methods (brief)
Narrative literature review; no analysis.
Evidence Fitness
Context only (evidence tier C): no primary measurements, so no findings were extracted. Useful as a pointer to primary biscuit surveys for the cheese-crackers, sugar-cookies and wheat-cereal-biscuits pages, which are not linked.