Overview
Sagita and colleagues measured lead by AAS in fried bakwan, a deep-fried vegetable and flour fritter, bought from 38 cart vendors in Semarang, Indonesia, in mid-2019. They related lead content to how often oil was reused for frying, the serving mat material and stall sanitation. Ten of 38 samples exceeded the national 0.25 mg/kg limit for processed food.
Key numbers
- Fried bakwan, n = 38: lead mean 0.184, median 0.054, SD 0.256, min 0.005, max 0.905 mg/kg (Table 1).
- Ten over-limit samples averaged 0.553 mg/kg, lowest 0.2860 mg/kg (Results, p. 165).
- Preliminary survey fried foods: 0.450, 0.409 and 0.491 mg/kg (Introduction, p. 164).
- Lead correlated with frying frequency (r = 0.525, p = 0.001), serving mat material (r = 0.424) and stall sanitation (r = 0.409) (Table 5).
Methods (brief)
Total sampling of eligible cart vendors with an observation checklist and Spearman correlations. Lead was measured by AAS after dry ashing. No detection limit, basis, reference material or recovery is reported.
Evidence Fitness
A modest single-city sample with a skewed distribution (median well below the mean) and no reported analytical QA. The abstract contradicts the results on significance. Fried flour fritters are a proxy for the doughnut page, not doughnut measurements.