Overview
Vella and Attard analysed 32 jarred infant foods (apple, pear, prune, fish, poultry and ruminant meat based) and six infant formulae bought in Malta for chromium, copper, mercury, nickel, iron, manganese and zinc by microwave plasma atomic emission, alongside hydroxymethylfurfural. Lead, cadmium and arsenic were not measured. Mercury was detected only in the pear-based foods.
Key numbers
- Mercury: not detected in all groups except pear-based foods, 0.12 ± 0.12 mg/kg (Table 3, p. 4).
- Nickel: 0.63 to 1.07 mg/kg across infant food groups; formulae 0.76 and 0.82 mg/kg (Table 3, p. 4).
- Chromium: apple-based 0.21 ± 0.06 mg/kg; formulae 0-6 months 0.29 ± 0.05 mg/kg (Table 3, p. 4).
Methods (brief)
One gram of product was digested with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide, dry ashed at 500 °C and read by MP-AES. LODs range from 0.0005 mg/kg (chromium) to 0.0789 mg/kg (mercury). No reference material or recovery is reported.
Evidence Fitness
Small sample (three to eight products per group) from one country, with no reference-material QA. The only positive mercury mean is below the stated mercury LOQ of 0.2391 mg/kg, and MP-AES is not a usual method for mercury. No cereal was tested and the formula base is not stated, so this is a proxy for infant-oat-cereal and non-soy-infant-formula and those pages are not linked.