Overview
Sultana, Chamon and Mondol bought potato, ginger, garlic and onion at Kawran Bazar, Dhaka’s main wholesale vegetable market, in four phases over two months and measured chromium, cadmium, lead, nickel, copper, zinc, iron and manganese by AAS. Table 2 gives each phase value and the four-phase mean on a dry-weight basis. Lead was mostly not detected but reached 4.00 mg/kg in single phases of potato and onion.
Key numbers
- Potato lead: 0.00, 0.00, 4.00 and 0.00 mg/kg dw by phase, mean 1.00 mg/kg dw (Table 2, p. 226).
- Potato cadmium: 0.00, 0.30, 0.00 and 0.00 mg/kg dw, mean 0.08 mg/kg dw (Table 2, p. 226).
- Onion lead mean 2.25 mg/kg dw; garlic cadmium mean 0.15 mg/kg dw; garlic lead 0.00 in every phase (Table 2, p. 226).
- Moisture: potato 79.0%, onion 86.0%, garlic 69.0%, ginger 81.3% (Table 1, p. 223).
Methods (brief)
Samples were washed, oven-dried at 60 to 70 °C, ground, digested with nitric and perchloric acids and read on a Varian AA 240 AAS. No detection limit, reference material or recovery is reported. Cells printed as 0.00 are recorded as not detected.
Evidence Fitness
One purchase per vegetable per phase (16 analyses in all), so each mean rests on four values and is driven by single high phases. The absence of QA and detection limits, and the step from 0.00 to 4.00 mg/kg lead in one phase, limit precision. Raw dry potato is a proxy for root-vegetable-purees; that page is not linked.