Overview
Roberge and colleagues bought 19 beverages and broths from one Tucson supermarket and measured total arsenic by ICP-MS, then bought 24 more items (including new lots of five of the first items) and measured total arsenic plus arsenite, arsenate, MMA and DMA by HPLC-ICP-MS. All results are per litre. Grape juice, apple juice and the broths were highest; colas and sports drinks were near 2 µg/L.
Key numbers
- Chicken broth 1, lot 1: total arsenic 22.81 µg/L; same brand, lot 2: 11.13 (0.40) µg/L (Tables 1 and 2, p. 690).
- Chicken broths 2 to 4, lot 2: 6.16, 6.76 and 7.54 µg/L total arsenic (Table 3, p. 691).
- Cola 1 and 2: 2.09 and 1.52 µg/L; sports drink 1 and 2: 2.09 and 1.91 µg/L (Table 1, p. 690).
- Grape juice 1, lot 1: 49.87 µg/L, the highest value (Table 1, p. 690).
Methods (brief)
Microwave digestion of 1 mL aliquots with nitric acid; total arsenic by ICP-MS with terbium internal standard; speciation by reverse-phase HPLC coupled to ICP-MS. Detection limits 0.1 µg/L for total arsenic and 0.04 to 0.06 µg/L for species. NIST SRM 1640 (natural water) recovered within about 3% of the certified value in both runs.
Evidence Fitness
One supermarket, one item per brand, two to four aliquots per item and no collection dates. Species were measured on single samples. Direct evidence for chicken broth. Colas and sports drinks are finished-drink proxies for diet-cola, lemon-lime-soft-drink and sports-drink-bases, so those pages are not linked. No soup was measured, so chicken-noodle-soup is not linked. Results are per litre and are not comparable with mg/kg values.