Overview
Pirhadi and colleagues measured eight elements by ICP-OES in 270 samples of wheat grain and two bread flours (Sangak, Lavash) from 10 Iranian flour factories in 2019 and ran a Monte Carlo risk assessment. Mean cadmium, lead and arsenic were very low, and the authors linked higher chromium, nickel and iron in some flours to worn mill rollers. Most numbers appear only in a bar chart.
Key numbers
- Highest average cadmium 0.008 ± 0.001, lead 0.017 ± 0.001 and arsenic 0.0006 ± 0.002 mg/kg; the lowest averages were not detected (Section 3.1).
- Maximum values: cadmium 0.09 and lead 0.02 mg/kg in wheat grain; chromium 1.01 and nickel 0.87 mg/kg in Lavash flour from one factory (Table 3).
Methods (brief)
Homogenized samples (5 g) were acid-digested and analyzed by ICP-OES in triplicate. Instrument detection limits were 2.16 µg/L for lead, 0.04 µg/L for cadmium and 1.0 µg/L for arsenic. Recovery was checked with spiked blanks, but recovery values are not printed.
Evidence Fitness
A large factory-based sample, but per-type and per-factory means are only in Figure 1, and the text gives just the lowest and highest averages without naming the sample (the copper pair is reversed). Table 3 maximum cadmium is about ten times the highest printed average. Wheat flour is a raw-material proxy for bagels, crackers, pretzels, tortillas, pastries, cinnamon rolls, pies and cream of wheat; none of those foods was measured, and pumpkin itself is unevidenced for pumpkin pie.