Evaluation of Lead, Cadmium and Nickel Contents in Different Conventional and Industrial Breads in Tehran Province

Introduction: One of the most important contamination sources of breads is environmental pollution, especially agricultural soil pollution with heavy metals. Heavy metals are transferred to roots of agricultural plants such as wheat, rice, and other cereals. Another way of heavy metals contamination is preparation and processing operations in the consumed breads. During the processing and preparation of breads, some additive materials such as contaminated water, salt, yeast, and baking soda can contaminate the breads with heavy metals.Aim: As bread is one of the most consumed foods in the world, especially in Iran, therefore, the pollution of this product has become one of the major concerns of food safety. Accordingly, the research was conducted to evaluate the bioavailability of heavy metals in different conventional and also Baguette breads in Tehran in 2019.Materials and Methods: Conventional flour of bread and also 85 different bread types such as Barbari, Lavash, and Baguette produced in 50 popular bakery shops in Tehran city were analyzed for some heavy metals: Cadmium, Lead and Nickel by Inductive Coupled Plasma instrument (ICP-QES). Ion concentrations were determined in three replicates using method of inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. Mean values were calculated, and one-way ANOVA, using the Minitab 15.0 statistical software was used for the analysis of data on the whole study. Results: In the current study, the levels of Pb in the bread samples showed a large variation among the different breads and even the bakery shops, the highest content of Pb in Baguette bread was approximately three-times higher than the lowest level in Lavash bread (p <0.05). The results indicated that the Ni and Cd concentrations of the samples were significantly (p <0.05) in Barbari lower in comparison with Baguette bread samples. Conclusion: The bread baking in the metal trays, contaminated bakery ovens due to lack of surveillance, and fuels contaminated with heavy metals probably are some major contamination parameters. The other issue which seriously should be screened, is investigation on pollution with heavy metals in the breads that includes packaging, urban and bakery air pollution that could be lead to bread contamination.

Keywords:

Conventional Bread , Baguette , Heavy Metals , Pollution , Food Safety