Evaluation of Toxic and Essential Metals in Some Selected Chewing Food Products and their Daily Intake by the Population of Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract

<jats:p>The present study focused on different brands of chewing food products which containing some toxic metals (TMs) and essential metals and these samples were analyzed to determine the levels of some toxic metals (Pb, Cd, Ni, Cr and Mn) and essential metals (Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Na and Zn). The samples of gutka (100), sweet supari (63), sweet paan (16) and paan masala (21) were randomly collected from different shops of Karachi, Pakistan. The validity of conventional wet acid digestion method (CAD) was assessed by analyzing two certified reference materials (CRM) Virgina tobacco leaf (CTA-VTL-2) and Bovine liver (1577b) and standard addition recovery test. The limit of detections (LODs, n=10) of the method were found to be 0.144, 14.4, 8.89, 2.76, 4.06, 15.3 and 2.99, 22.9, 9.97, 4.54, 1.89, 1.76 µg L -1 for Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Na, Zn, Cd, Cr, Mn, Ni and Pb, respectively. The CAD method was successfully applied to real samples for the determination of toxic and essential metals.</jats:p>