Overview
Uba and colleagues measured cadmium, lead, zinc, iron, magnesium, chromium and nickel by AAS in watermelon, orange, okra and spinach from a market in Dutse, Nigeria, and computed hazard quotients, bioaccumulation factors and a pollution index. Per-food results appear only as bar charts; the text quotes the lowest and highest values in mg/mL.
Key numbers
- Lead: 0.4±0.005 mg/mL in spinach to 0.8±0.01 mg/mL in okra (Results text, p. 53).
- Cadmium: from 0.34±0.01 mg/mL in spinach; the maximum, 0.6±0.02 mg/mL, is printed without naming the food (p. 53).
- Nickel: 0.75±0.01 mg/mL in watermelon to 8.08±0.01 mg/mL in spinach (p. 54).
Methods (brief)
Edible parts oven dried at 80 °C, ground, microwave digested with HNO3/H2O2/HClO4 (7:2:1), diluted to 50 mL and analysed by AAS. No LOD, reference material or recovery reported.
Evidence Fitness
Weak evidence. The mg/mL unit has no stated volume reference and cannot be converted to a food concentration; the magnitudes are implausible, so all findings carry an integrity flag and no µg/kg values are stored. Full results are figure-only. The text says the lead hazard quotient exceeds one while Table 1 prints 0.134. Watermelon is a proxy for the cantaloupe page, and spinach and okra are proxies for the non-root-vegetable-purees page; neither is linked.