Overview
Sarsembayeva and colleagues analyzed raw cow milk and cottage cheese from two farms in the Almaty region in 2018 and 2019 for cadmium, lead, arsenic and mercury. Cadmium and lead were low in milk and higher in cottage cheese, and arsenic and mercury were below the instrument’s detection limit in cottage cheese. All values were below the national maximum allowable concentrations.
Key numbers
- Raw milk cadmium 0.0025 to 0.0029 ppm; lead 0.0010 to 0.008 ppm (Table-1).
- Cottage cheese cadmium 0.0446 to 0.0570 mg/kg; lead 0.0089 to 0.0162 mg/kg (Table-2).
- Farm A cottage cheese mean cadmium 0.0520 ± 0.03 and lead 0.0116 ± 0.01 mg/kg (Results text).
Methods (brief)
Dry ashing and acid mineralization, then flame AAS for cadmium and lead; mercury and arsenic by stripping voltammetry. No detection limits, certified reference materials or recoveries are reported.
Evidence Fitness
Small tabulated dataset from two farms, with only 14 of the stated 200 samples shown, no QA data, and a text mean for milk lead (0.0045 ppm) that does not match the table. For the thin pages it was pulled for (reduced-fat milk, custard, fromage frais), this is a raw-milk and cottage-cheese proxy; milk fat level is not separated and none of those foods was measured.