Overview
Tokay measured 16 elements by ICP-OES in 13 retail canned, jarred and frozen vegetables from Balikesir supermarkets, on a wet-weight basis. Cadmium, chromium, vanadium and cobalt were below detection in every product. Lead was detected only in one frozen green pea product, at 1.3 mg/kg. The paper’s main focus is nutritional intake of the essential elements.
Key numbers
- Frozen green peas: lead 1.3 ± 0.1 mg/kg (Table 3; text gives 1.34 ± 0.10), the only lead result above the 0.11 mg/kg LOD.
- Canned green beans (tin can): lead and nickel not detected, aluminum 0.32 ± 0.02 mg/kg (Table 3).
- Cadmium: below the 0.052 mg/kg LOD in all 13 products (Section 3).
- Aluminum: 0.32-1.74 mg/kg where detected (Table 3).
Methods (brief)
About 1 g of homogenized product was digested with nitric acid in a closed microwave system, in three independent digestions per product, and read by ICP-OES. LODs were 109.65 µg/kg for lead and 52.41 µg/kg for cadmium. NIST SRM 1549a milk powder gave 93.6-107.8 percent recovery, but only for barium, calcium, iron, copper, magnesium and zinc.
Evidence Fitness
One product per vegetable and packaging type, with no collection dates. The lead and cadmium LODs are high relative to typical vegetable levels, so the non-detects do not show low contamination, and the reference material did not cover lead or cadmium. The single lead detection in frozen peas is unexplained. Canned green beans and other non-root vegetables are measured directly; vegetable-beef-soup is only a proxy and is not linked.