Ungureanu et al. 2022 - potentially toxic elements in bottled drinking water

Ungureanu et al. measured 12 potentially toxic elements in 50 bottled drinking-water samples sold on the Romanian market. The sample set included still, spring, sparkling, table, semi-sparkling, and artesian waters in PET bottles, mostly produced in Romania with additional European and Fiji-origin products. Most measured elements were below applicable drinking-water limits, but one sample exceeded the Pb limit and several samples had elevated Fe.

Key numbers

• Sample frame: 50 bottled drinking-water samples purchased from 2019 to 2021; 45 were still mineral water and 5 were carbonated mineral water. The set included 36 Romanian brands, 13 brands from other European countries, and 1 Fiji-origin sample.
• Analytical scope: Ba, Co, Cu, Zn, Mn, Ni, Li, Fe, Pb, Cd, Cr, and Sb, reported in micrograms per liter.
• Pb: minimum below 0.07 micrograms/L, maximum 6.0 +/- 0.25 micrograms/L, mean 0.59 +/- 150.33 micrograms/L as printed in Table 1. The authors state that Pb was detected in 96% of samples and that one sample exceeded the 5 micrograms/L limit.
• Cd: minimum and maximum both below 0.09 micrograms/L; the authors report Cd detection in 0% of samples.
• Cr: minimum below 0.10 micrograms/L and maximum 4.02 +/- 2.12 micrograms/L.
• Sb: minimum below 0.07 micrograms/L and maximum 0.64 +/- 6.85 micrograms/L.
• Fe: minimum 13.73 +/- 7.49 micrograms/L and maximum 1761.24 +/- 1.23 micrograms/L; the authors state that Fe exceeded the 200 micrograms/L limit in 94% of samples.
• Detection limits were 0.07 micrograms/L for Sb and Pb; 0.09 micrograms/L for Ba, Cu, Mn, Ni, and Cd; 0.10 micrograms/L for Co and Cr; 0.11 micrograms/L for Li; 0.13 micrograms/L for Zn; and 0.15 micrograms/L for Fe.

Methods (brief)

The study evaporated 300 mL water aliquots to dryness, treated the residue twice with 1:1 nitric acid, and brought the final solution to 50 mL. Validation used SPS-SW2 surface-water certified reference material. The paper reports recoveries between 90% and 105%, relative standard deviation at or below 4%, and calibration curves from 0 to 50 micrograms/L with correlation coefficients above 0.996. The paper does not report arsenic or mercury measurements in this dataset.

Implications

Certification: The study contributes bottled-water occurrence evidence for Pb, Cd, Cr, Sb, Ni, and other elements in a European market sample set. The values are source-scope measurements and should remain jurisdiction- and market-labeled rather than pooled silently into a U.S. bottled-water benchmark.

Courses: The paper is useful for explaining how bottled-water contamination can reflect aquifer chemistry, packaging migration, and storage/transport conditions.

App: The study supports bottled-water and mineral-water evidence surfaces, with the key caveat that results are Romanian/EU-market data from 2019-2021.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• bottled-drinking-water
• mineral-water
• sparkling-carbonated-water
• water
• lead
• cadmium
• chromium
• nickel

Verification notes

• The source title page reports publication in 2022 even though the auto-fetched filename includes 2023.
• Table 1 appears to print unusually large uncertainty values for several means, including Pb and Cd. This page preserves the table text and separately records the authors’ detection-rate and exceedance statements.
• The paper measures total chromium only; it does not provide Cr(VI) speciation.

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.