Quantitative Analysis of Lead, Cadmium and Chromium in Different Brands of Junk Food Marketed in Metro Manila, Philippines

Overview

Solidum and colleagues measured lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and total chromium (Cr) in 36 junk-food samples purchased from sari-sari stores in Metro Manila, Philippines. The study reports ppm concentrations from flame atomic absorption spectroscopy after nitric-acid digestion. The occurrence finding is aggregate rather than brand-routed here: one imported snack sample had the highest Pb value, Cd was low or non-detectable, and every tested snack was above the source’s chromium comparator.

Key numbers

Aggregate findings reported in the abstract and discussion:

The source tables provide sample-level rows, but this source page does not reproduce brand or product-name rows because doing so would attach consumer product names to contamination values.

Methods (brief)

Thirty-six junk-food samples were randomly selected from sari-sari stores in Metro Manila in June 2012. Five grams of each sample were digested overnight at room temperature in 10 mL concentrated nitric acid, heated at 80 C for 5 h the next day, cooled, filtered, adjusted to 50 mL with distilled water, and analyzed by atomic absorption spectroscopy. The paper’s methods section uses both “flameless atomic absorption spectroscopy” and “flame atomic absorption spectroscopy” wording; the abstract and table discussion describe flame AAS.

Implications

This source contributes Philippines-market snack-food occurrence context for Pb, Cd, and total Cr. Its direct product fit is broad snacks/crackers/biscuits rather than a narrower ingredient row because the sample set mixes many branded snack forms. It is not suitable for hexavalent chromium (Cr-VI) routing because chromium was measured and reported only as total Cr.

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git.