Sund et al. 2026 - processing effects on potentially toxic elements in sugar kelp
Sund and coauthors compared pulsed electric field processing with warm-water treatment for reducing iodine and potentially toxic elements in Saccharina latissima. The source is processing and mitigation evidence for seaweed-kelp foods. It reports that PEF at the highest level reduced iodine by 25%, warm-water treatment reduced iodine by 19%, and PEF retained less lead than warm-water treatment.
Key numbers
The paper reports three PEF levels with 200, 500, and 800 pulses. PEF 3 reduced iodine concentration by 25%; warm-water treatment reduced iodine by 19%. True-retention values showed 58-73% arsenic retention during processing, 81-86% cadmium retention, 80-88% mercury retention, and 96% lead retention in warm-water-treated seaweed. The text reports that PEF processing had lower lead retention than warm-water treatment.
Table 3 reports mineral and potentially toxic element concentrations on a dry-weight basis. Extracted examples include macro-mineral values such as unprocessed calcium 8,970 +/- 340 mg/kg dry weight and sodium 65,600 +/- 2,000 mg/kg dry weight; the PTE rows require rendered-table verification before sample-level extraction.
Methods (brief)
Ground Saccharina latissima was mixed with water and processed by pulsed electric field at three pulse counts or by warm-water treatment at 60 degrees C water bath conditions for 120 seconds. Chemical analyses of PTEs, minerals, and amino acids were used to calculate mass balances and true retention.
Implications
Certification: Useful mitigation evidence for seaweed-kelp foods. It supports processing-effect notes, not raw occurrence pooling without treatment stratification.
Courses: Provides a concrete example of why mitigation claims need mass-balance or true-retention accounting rather than concentration-only comparisons.
App: Can support a processed-seaweed qualifier if synthesis distinguishes raw, PEF-treated, and warm-water-treated forms.
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Verification notes
The DOI was minted with a 2025 identifier and the PDF was published online in 2025, but the journal issue is Journal of Applied Phycology 38:933-945 (2026); the frontmatter year follows the PDF issue year. The extracted text did not preserve all Table 3 PTE concentration rows cleanly, so those rows should be verified from the rendered PDF before structured benchmark pooling.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 50ec0f0 | 2026-05-30 | ingest auto-fetched 2026-05-30 2145 batch 1: 10 source pages |