Vincevica-Gaile et al. 2024 - Total arsenic in commercial infant and toddler foods in Libya
Vincevica-Gaile and colleagues measured total arsenic in 36 commercial infant/toddler food samples purchased in Libya, grouped by label-declared cereal mixture, wheat, or rice composition. The highest average concentrations were reported in rice-containing infant/toddler foods, but the paper measured total arsenic only and did not speciate inorganic arsenic.
Key numbers
The study used NIST SRM 1568a rice flour as reference material. For arsenic, the reference value was 0.29 +/- 0.03 mg/kg, the detected mean was 0.22 +/- 0.03 mg/kg, recovery was 76%, and the instrumental LOD was 0.02 micrograms/L.
Table 2 reports total arsenic in infant/toddler foods containing mixed cereals:
| Origin | N | Range | Mean/median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Libya | 3 | 0.05 to 0.17 mg/kg | 0.11 mg/kg |
| Turkey | 2 | 0.19 to 0.27 mg/kg | 0.23 mg/kg |
| France | 1 | 0.15 mg/kg | 0.15 mg/kg |
| Egypt | 1 | 0.16 mg/kg | 0.16 mg/kg |
| Overall ITF-mix | 7 | 0.05 to 0.27 mg/kg | 0.16 mg/kg |
Table 3 reports total arsenic in wheat-containing infant/toddler foods:
| Origin | N | Range | Mean/median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | 8 | 0.04 to 0.25 mg/kg | 0.14 / 0.16 mg/kg |
| Oman | 4 | 0.09 to 0.22 mg/kg | 0.16 / 0.17 mg/kg |
| Egypt | 3 | 0.29 to 0.33 mg/kg | 0.32 / 0.33 mg/kg |
| Germany | 2 | 0.08 to 0.14 mg/kg | 0.11 mg/kg |
| Tunisia | 1 | 0.20 mg/kg | 0.20 mg/kg |
| Overall ITF-wheat | 18 | 0.04 to 0.33 mg/kg | 0.19 mg/kg |
Table 4 reports total arsenic in rice-containing infant/toddler foods:
| Origin | N | Range | Mean/median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | 7 | 0.15 to 0.35 mg/kg | 0.22 / 0.21 mg/kg |
| France | 3 | 0.15 to 0.39 mg/kg | 0.24 / 0.20 mg/kg |
| Libya | 1 | 0.16 mg/kg | 0.16 mg/kg |
| Overall ITF-rice | 11 | 0.15 to 0.39 mg/kg | 0.21 / 0.19 mg/kg |
The authors report that country-of-origin differences were significant for ITF-wheat (P < 0.004) but not for ITF-mix (P = 0.34) or ITF-rice (P = 0.72).
Methods (brief)
Infant/toddler food samples were purchased from supermarkets in Sabha, Tripoli, and Benghazi, Libya. The authors grouped samples as cereal mixture (n = 7), rice-containing (n = 11), and wheat-containing (n = 18) based on product labels and country of production. Samples were dried at 90 degrees C for 48 h, digested from 0.2 g dry mass with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide in a Mars5 microwave digester, brought to 50 mL, and analyzed for total arsenic by ICP-MS.
Implications
Certification: This source can support total-arsenic occurrence context for infant cereal and infant/toddler dry food rows in the Libyan market. It should not be entered as inorganic arsenic without a documented speciation assumption.
Courses: Useful for teaching why rice-containing infant foods are monitored separately from other cereal foods and why total arsenic measurements need speciation follow-up.
App: Can inform market- and ingredient-aware arsenic priors for infant/toddler foods, especially rice-containing cereal products sold in Libya.
Wiki pages this source may touch
- infant-rice-cereal
- infant-cereal
- infant-food-powder
- infant-food-general
- rice-cereal
- cereal-based-infant-formula
- rice
- wheat
- arsenic-total
- arsenic
Verification notes
This page was built from the PDF title/byline, abstract, methods, Tables 1-4, discussion, and conclusions. The source uses tAs because ICP-MS total arsenic was reported without arsenic speciation. The Table 4 heading says “ITF-wheat” in the PDF, but its section title, row labels, and discussion identify the table as rice-containing ITF; this page records it as ITF-rice and notes no change to source values.
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.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1476f44 | 2026-06-09 | ingest: cacic2019-hemp-heavy-metals fresh from MFK/June 9 |