Santos et al. 2017 - arsenic, cadmium, and lead in yerba mate
Santos and coauthors measured total arsenic, cadmium, and lead in 104 yerba mate samples marketed in three southern Brazilian states. Cadmium was the main compliance signal: many samples exceeded Brazil’s 0.4 mg/kg ANVISA cadmium limit, while arsenic remained below the cited 0.6 mg/kg limit. The source is occurrence evidence for dried yerba mate leaves used in herbal infusions, not mineral water.
Key numbers
The authors report As, Cd, and Pb in yerba mate leaves as mg/kg.
| State | n | tAs mean +/- SD | Cd mean +/- SD | Pb mean +/- SD | Reported ranges |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rio Grande do Sul | 77 | 0.03 +/- 0.01 mg/kg | 0.59 +/- 0.20 mg/kg | 0.41 +/- 0.23 mg/kg | As 0.015-0.033; Cd 0.18-1.25; Pb 0.10-1.20 mg/kg |
| Santa Catarina | 11 | 0.06 +/- 0.03 mg/kg | 0.42 +/- 0.19 mg/kg | 0.29 +/- 0.09 mg/kg | As 0.015-0.114; Cd 0.25-0.71; Pb 0.20-0.54 mg/kg |
| Parana | 16 | 0.056 +/- 0.03 mg/kg | 0.47 +/- 0.15 mg/kg | 0.44 +/- 0.10 mg/kg | As 0.015-0.15; Cd 0.21-0.72; Pb 0.25-0.70 mg/kg |
The abstract summarizes whole-study ranges as tAs 0.015-0.15 mg/kg, Cd 0.18-1.25 mg/kg, and Pb 0.1-1.20 mg/kg. The authors state that Cd exceeded 0.4 mg/kg in 84% of Rio Grande do Sul samples, 63% of Parana samples, and 75% of Santa Catarina samples; Pb was unsatisfactory in 7% of Rio Grande do Sul and 5% of Parana samples.
Methods (brief)
Samples were extracted after hot-water treatment and analyzed by ICP-MS on a PerkinElmer NexION 300D. The method detection limits were 5.5 ng/L for As, 4.9 ng/L for Cd, and 43 ng/L for Pb, with reported recoveries of 104%, 109%, and 114%, respectively.
Implications
Certification: The paper supports herbal-infusion ingredient evidence for Cd and Pb in yerba mate leaves, with Brazilian market geography preserved.
Courses: The study is a useful example of jurisdiction-specific herb and infusion evidence where total arsenic is measured but inorganic arsenic is not speciated.
App: The values can inform a Brazil-specific yerba mate or herbal-botanical flag after synthesis decides how to represent a commodity without a dedicated ingredient page.
Wiki pages this source may touch
Verification notes
The wishlist filename misclassified this as mineral-water inorganic-arsenic evidence. The PDF is a yerba mate leaf occurrence study and reports total arsenic, not inorganic arsenic. State names and sample counts were taken from Table 2.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 50ec0f0 | 2026-05-30 | ingest auto-fetched 2026-05-30 2145 batch 1: 10 source pages |