Overview
Salem and colleagues bought 30 infant formula samples from retail outlets in Bani Waleed City in early 2023 and measured iron, lead, cadmium and copper by flame atomic absorption after acid digestion. Table 1 gives one pooled mean, standard deviation and range per metal. Cadmium was not detected in any sample.
Key numbers
- Lead: mean 0.05 mg/kg, SD 0.02, range 0.02 to 0.1 mg/kg (Table 1, p. 122).
- Cadmium: not detected, detection limit 0.01 mg/kg (Table 1, p. 122).
- Copper: mean 1.2 mg/kg, range 0.8 to 1.8 mg/kg; iron mean 12.5 mg/kg, range 8.2 to 16.4 mg/kg (Table 1, p. 122).
Methods (brief)
Powdered formula was reconstituted (10 g in 100 mL water), filtered at 0.45 µm, then digested with nitric and perchloric acids; ready-to-feed formula was weighed directly. Flame AAS (Varian AA240) with calibration standards and blanks. No reference material, recovery or lead detection limit is reported.
Evidence Fitness
Thirty samples, pooled into a single row per metal, with no split by brand, formula type or milk base. Because the milk base is not stated, the record is not linked to the non-soy-infant-formula page, although most retail formula is cow-milk based. Flame AAS is marginal for lead at 0.02 mg/kg, and filtering before digestion may lower results. The DOI is not printed in the PDF; volume, issue and pages match the manifest.