Overview
Tahboub and colleagues measured acrylamide and 23 elements by ICP-MS in 30 potato and corn chip samples sold in Jordan, and estimated health risk for a 35 kg child eating 20 g of chips a day. Mean lead was 201 µg/kg, cadmium 56.1 µg/kg and arsenic 32.6 µg/kg across all samples. Corn chips averaged more lead than potato chips, and all four samples above 0.445 mg/kg lead were corn chips.
Key numbers
- All 30 samples: lead 201 ± 210 µg/kg (32 to 870, median 120); cadmium 56.1 ± 51.9 µg/kg (4.70 to 210); arsenic 32.6 ± 13.0 µg/kg (11.6 to 58.7) (Table 1).
- Corn chips (n = 15): lead 0.27 ± 0.26 mg/kg, cadmium 0.046 ± 0.05 mg/kg, arsenic 0.035 ± 0.01 mg/kg (Table 2).
- Potato chips (n = 15): lead 0.13 ± 0.10 mg/kg, cadmium 0.065 ± 0.04 mg/kg, arsenic 0.029 ± 0.01 mg/kg (Table 2).
- Aluminum 10,555 ± 4,058 µg/kg across all samples (Table 1).
- Lead health risk index 0.42 for the child scenario (Table 3).
Methods (brief)
Ground chips (0.5 g) were microwave-digested in nitric acid with hydrogen peroxide and read on an Agilent 7500a ICP-MS with external calibration. Instrument detection limits for the toxic elements were 0.056 to 3.45 µg/L. No certified reference material or spike recovery is reported. Results are on an as-sold basis.
Evidence Fitness
Thirty retail samples split into origin and type groups, with means, ranges and medians, but no reference material and several internal conflicts. The text gives lead as 32 to 4870 µg/kg with a mean of 334, against 32 to 870 and 201 in Table 1. Table 1 also prints an iron mean and SD that its own maximum cannot support and a vanadium mean outside its range. The table caption calls the samples honey. The sampling text calls all 30 samples potato chips, while the tables split them 15 corn and 15 potato. Potato chips are measured directly. The corn chips are a proxy for tortilla-chips (the chip style is not stated), and both chip types are a salty-snack proxy for pretzels, so neither of those pages is linked.