Overview
Wahab and Jamil measured arsenic, cadmium, lead, cobalt, chromium, copper and nickel by ICP-OES in 27 domestic and imported wheat flours bought in Sulaimani, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Table 1 gives the mean ± SD of three technical replicates for each flour. Mercury was not measured.
Key numbers
- Lead was quantifiable only in domestic white flour F0: 0.64 ± 0.07 mg/kg; all others were below LOQ (Table 1).
- Arsenic: 0.207 to 0.277 mg/kg where quantified, highest in domestic flour F21 (Table 1).
- Cadmium: up to 0.05 mg/kg; nickel up to 0.21 mg/kg in F0 (Table 1).
Methods (brief)
Microwave digestion of 1.0 g with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide, ICP-OES (Shimadzu ICPE-9820), three technical replicates. Detection limits are given in solution only (arsenic 0.002, lead 0.003 mg/L); LOQ, certified reference materials and recoveries are not reported.
Evidence Fitness
One package per flour and no analytical QA reported. Several cadmium and nickel means are printed as 0.00 with a non-zero SD and are flagged. Only two flours (F17, F25) are explicitly whole wheat. Arsenic is total arsenic. Flour is an ingredient proxy only for chapattis, cheese-crackers, cheese-pizza, pie-crust, sugar-cookies, wheat-cereal-biscuits, white-cake and whole-wheat-pasta; those pages are not linked.