Overview
Suleiman and colleagues measured zinc, chromium, cadmium, iron and copper by AAS in baked beans collected in Jere LGA, Borno State, Nigeria. Table 1 gives one value per metal. The authors call all values safe, although their cadmium and chromium values exceed the WHO figures they print.
Key numbers
- Baked beans: cadmium “3” mg/kg and chromium “13” mg/kg, against printed WHO figures of 0.1 and 0.8 mg/kg (Table 1, p. 6).
- Zinc “25”, iron “24” and copper “16” mg/kg (Table 1, p. 6).
Methods (brief)
One gram of dried sample was digested with hydrochloric and nitric acids and read by AAS. No detection limits, replicates, reference materials or recoveries are reported.
Evidence Fitness
A single result per metal without sample counts or quality control, and a cadmium value of 3 mg/kg by AAS is implausibly high for beans, so this is weak evidence. Baked beans are a proxy for canned-green-beans; the paper does not say the beans were canned, and that page is not linked. Lead and arsenic were not measured.