Sattler et al. 2016 - Minerals and inorganic contaminants in dried bee pollen from Rio Grande do Sul
This survey measured essential minerals and inorganic contaminants in five dehydrated bee-pollen samples from southern Brazil. The occurrence-relevant table reports Ba, Cd, Li, Pb, and V in mg/100 g, with Cd ranging from 0.0026 to 0.0244 mg/100 g and Pb ranging from 0.012 to 0.018 mg/100 g. The source is routeable for dried bee pollen and botanical supplement context; it is not a US-market benchmark source.
Key numbers
Table 3 reports inorganic contaminants in dried bee pollen as mean +/- SD, mg/100 g, n=3 analytical replicates per sample:
| Sample | Ba | Cd | Li | Pb | V |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.660 +/- 0.006 | 0.0026 +/- 0.0002 | 0.223 +/- 0.001 | 0.018 +/- 0.001 | 0.399 +/- 0.004 |
| 2 | 0.393 +/- 0.002 | 0.0029 +/- 0.0001 | 0.191 +/- 0.002 | 0.012 +/- 0.002 | 0.489 +/- 0.003 |
| 3 | 0.506 +/- 0.002 | 0.0060 +/- 0.0000 | 0.215 +/- 0.002 | 0.015 +/- 0.001 | 0.489 +/- 0.004 |
| 4 | 0.570 +/- 0.008 | 0.0098 +/- 0.0001 | 0.200 +/- 0.002 | 0.012 +/- 0.002 | 0.423 +/- 0.003 |
| 5 | 1.593 +/- 0.017 | 0.0244 +/- 0.0003 | 0.235 +/- 0.002 | 0.017 +/- 0.001 | 0.416 +/- 0.004 |
| Grand mean | 0.744 +/- 0.007 | 0.0091 +/- 0.0001 | 0.213 +/- 0.002 | 0.015 +/- 0.001 | 0.443 +/- 0.003 |
The same paper reports essential elements in mg/100 g: Ca 64.3-72.2, Fe 5.8-31.2, Cu 0.68-1.31, Cr 0.2-4.2, Mn 2.8-6.2, Mo 0.02-0.46, P 443-524, and Zn 2.9-4.3.
Methods (brief)
Samples were digested by wet acid digestion and analyzed by ICP-OES. The five pollen samples came from two municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul and were collected over the 2011 production season. Values are reported on the source’s mg/100 g basis for dehydrated pollen.
Implications
Dried bee pollen can carry measurable Cd, Pb, Ba, Li, and V. For HMTc, the source supports botanical supplement and bee-pollen occurrence context, but it should remain stratified as Brazil-market/apiary evidence and should not be silently pooled into US dietary-supplement benchmarks.
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Verification notes
The PDF includes DOI, authors, journal, year, and complete Table 3 values. The authors state that samples 3, 4, and 5 failed cited Cd/Pb standards; the tabulated Cd values clearly exceed the cited 0.003 mg/100 g level in samples 3-5, while all tabulated Pb values are below the cited 0.05 mg/100 g level, so downstream routing should preserve the table values rather than infer a Pb exceedance.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 4039d20 | 2026-06-10 | scope: broaden ingest to the full upstream+downstream literature (marine, atmospheric, attribution, exposure, toxicology) — inclusion is the default |