Overview
Pawlaczyk and colleagues recorded semi-quantitative ICP time-of-flight mass spectra of 20 whiskies and measured total mercury quantitatively with a direct mercury analyzer, then used the data to separate whiskies by origin and type. Only mercury is reported as a concentration. No whisky exceeded the Polish mercury limit of 20 µg/L for spirits.
Key numbers
- Average total mercury: Speyside Scotch 1.82 µg/L, Highland Scotch 2.13 µg/L, Irish 2.16 µg/L, US 4.56 µg/L (Section 2.1).
- Lead, cadmium and arsenic were compared only by signal intensity against a standard, and the authors judged no Polish limit was exceeded (Section 3.2).
Methods (brief)
Whiskies were microwave-digested in nitric acid for ICP-TOF-MS, scanned as signal intensities for 21 isotopes without quantitative calibration. Mercury was measured by thermal decomposition in triplicate 50 µL injections against L-cysteine-stabilized standards. No reference material for whisky exists, and no detection limit is given.
Evidence Fitness
A small set (20 whiskies) giving direct whiskey mercury averages by origin, but without per-sample values, sample counts per region or a detection limit; the sample table is garbled in the PDF text. Cadmium and lead data are semi-quantitative and cannot be used as concentrations. Results are per litre. A later, larger dataset from the same group is gajek2022-whisky-elemental-fingerprints-type-age-origin, in which mercury was below the quantification limit.
Related evidence
- Distilled spirits
- Mercury, Total
- The Elemental Fingerprints of Different Types of Whisky as Determined by ICP-OES and ICP-MS Techniques in Relation to Their Type, Age, and Origin
Update history
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