Overview
Prattay and colleagues bought 39 confectionery brands in Dhaka and measured lead, chromium, nickel and cadmium by AAS in 26 candy brands, 9 chocolate brands and their wrappers, alongside moisture, sulphated ash and bacterial counts. Lead in candies reached 2.40 µg/g and cadmium 0.44 µg/g. Wrappers carried far more lead, up to 2586.75 µg/g.
Key numbers
- Hard candy brand S10: lead 2.40 ± 0.01 µg/g, nickel 14.78 ± 1.87 µg/g (Table 6, p. 7).
- Toffee brand S8: nickel 48.10 ± 4.20 µg/g (Table 6, p. 7).
- Chocolate brands: lead 0.86 to 1.18 µg/g where detected, cadmium 0.17 to 0.42 µg/g (Table 6, p. 7).
- Chocolate wrapper P30: lead 2586.75 ± 50.39 µg/g (Table 7, p. 8).
Methods (brief)
Candy and chocolate were ground, oven-dried at 70 °C for 1 h and digested with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide; wrappers were ashed at 650 °C before digestion. Flame AAS; QA rests on calibration standards (recoveries 101 to 102%). No reference material and no detection limits are reported.
Evidence Fitness
Each brand is one pooled result of triplicate analyses, with no LOD and no reference material. Brands with no detectable lead show chromium near 11 to 12 µg/g, an odd pattern that may reflect analytical batches. Plain candies and chocolate are proxies for chocolate-nut-candy and fruit-snack-candy, and no biscuit was measured, so those thin pages are not linked. Wrapper values are packaging, not food.