Overview
Sulaiman and colleagues sampled soil, roots and leaves of pak choi, amaranth and caisim at a campus farm in Jengka, Malaysia, and measured arsenic, cadmium and lead by graphite furnace AAS. Leaf cadmium (0.15 to 0.54 mg/kg) exceeded leaf arsenic and lead. All leaf values were within Malaysian limits.
Key numbers
- Amaranth leaves: arsenic 0.43, cadmium 0.54, lead 0.05 mg/kg (Section 3.1 text).
- Pak choi leaves: arsenic 0.19, cadmium 0.31, lead 0.03 mg/kg (Section 3.1 text).
- Caisim leaves: arsenic 0.36, cadmium 0.15, lead 0.03 mg/kg (Section 3.1 text).
Methods (brief)
Leaves and roots rinsed, oven dried at 60 °C, acid digested and analysed by graphite furnace AAS; results treated as dry weight. Recoveries of 85 to 110% against spinach and soil reference materials.
Evidence Fitness
One farm, three species, per-species sample numbers not stated, values printed only as means. The stated detection limits (arsenic 1.00, lead 0.10 mg/kg) are above every leaf arsenic and lead mean, so those values are flagged as irreconcilable with the method. Farm produce, not retail. Single leafy vegetables are a proxy for vegetables-mixed: the paper does not measure a mixed-vegetable product, so it is not linked to that page.