Overview
Rubio-Armendáriz and colleagues analysed 126 samples of rice, corn, wheat, corn flour, wheat flour and corn gofio sold on two Cape Verde islands between 2017 and 2019 for aluminium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, lead and strontium by ICP-OES. Most group means appear only as box plots; the text states a few. Gofio, made from roasted whole corn, had the most lead and aluminium.
Key numbers
- Corn gofio: lead 0.08 ± 0.05 mg/kg and aluminium 13.4 ± 12.7 mg/kg fresh weight (pp. 6-7); one São Vicente gofio sample had 39 mg/kg aluminium (p. 9).
- Wheat flour: cadmium 0.02 ± 0.01 mg/kg; wheat grain: cadmium 0.01 ± 0.01 mg/kg fresh weight (p. 7).
- The text attributes the highest strontium, nickel and chromium (1.60, 0.25 and 0.13 mg/kg) to wheat flour, but Figure 2 and Table 5 place them in wheat grain (p. 7).
Methods (brief)
Microwave digestion with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide; ICP-OES (iCAP 6300 Duo). LOQs in solution: cadmium and lead 0.001 mg/L, aluminium 0.012 mg/L. SRM 1515, 1548a and 1567a recoveries above 94% (Table 4).
Evidence Fitness
Reasonable QA and sample size, but most results are figure-only and only text-stated means are extracted; the wheat versus wheat flour attribution conflict is flagged. Most products were imported and sold loose by weight, so origins per sample are unknown. These cereals are proxies for the cereal and wheat-cereal-biscuits pages, which are not linked.