Determination of Heavy Metals in Honey in Kahramanmaraş City, Turkey

Abstract

Heavy metals in honey are of interest not only for quality control, but also for determination environmental contamination. The objective of this work was to determine distribution of the levels of selected heavy metals. Levels of copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), manganese (Mn), Iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg) and nickel (Ni) in honey samples (21) in Kahramanmaraş region were determined by atomic absorption spectrometer (AAS). The mean values for Cu, Cd, Mn, Fe, and Mg were 0.01, 0.32, 0.03, 0.36 and 10.45 ppm, respectively. Nickel was not detected in honey samples. Kahramanmaraş honey samples were not free of heavy metals but the levels of them were found well below the permitted levels. The results suggested that honey may be useful for assessing the presence of environmental contaminants.

Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals and Pesticides in Honey From Sicily (Italy)

“…Metal concentrations found in honey samples in this study are lower than residual levels obtained by other author in honey from Turkey (Erbilir & Erdogrul, 2005) and Spain (Frias et al, 2008), similar to that obtained in other region of Italy (Ruschioni et al, 2013;Perna, Simonetti, Intaglietta, Sofo, & Gambacorta, 2012) but higher than in France (Lambert et al, 2012). Considering the different floral types, the comparative analysis of metals residual levels in our honey samples (Figure 1) showed higher levels of both Pb and Cd in chestnut honey vs eucalyptus (in accordance with Perna et al, 2012) and vs carob samples.…”

Determination of trace elements in Croatian floral honey originating from different regions

“…Levels observed were lower than those reported in Macedonia (3.63 lg kg À1 ; Stankovska, Stafilov, & Šajn, 2006, Italy (4.25 lg kg À1 ; Pisani, Protano, & Riccobono, 2008) and Turkey (10.9-21.2 lg kg À1 and 1.1-17.9 lg kg À1 ; Tuzen, Silici, Mendril, & Soylak, 2007;Tuzen & Soylak, 2005 Erbilir & Erdogrul, 2005) and different geographical regions of Turkey (0.38-2.03 lg kg À1 ; Silici et al, 2008) and Romania (0.015 lg kg À1 ; Bratu & Beorgescu, 2005). Arsenic levels ranged from 4.00 to 105 lg kg À1 and the mean content in all honey samples was 19.7 lg kg À1 .…”

Seasonal variation in trace and minor elements in Brazilian honey by total reflection X-ray fluorescence

“…Rashed and Soltan (2004) reported high values of Fe in orange honeys collected in Egypt, with average values of 80 μg.g −1 , representing an unusually high result compared to this and other studies (Erbilir and Erdoĝrul 2005;Lacerda et al 2010;Baroni et al 2009). …”