The content and health risk assessment of micro and toxic elements in cereals (oat and quinoa), legumes (lentil and chick pea), and seeds (chia, hemp, and flax)

Abstract

This study determined the micro (Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, and Zn) and toxic (Al, As, Cd, Hg, and Pb) elements in cereals (oat and quinoa), legumes (lentil and chick pea), and seeds (chia, hemp, and flax) from a commercial market in South Korea using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, and a mercury analyzer. These methods proved suitable for analyzing micro and toxic elements, which are validated by linearity, limits of detection and quantification, and recovery measurements. The content of all the studied elements differed among the cereals, legumes, and seeds. The results show mean values of 4.4–30.2, 0.0094–0.029, 0.0051–0.49, N.D.–0.002, 0.0048–0.11, 7.8–35.7, 89.6–270, 2.0–10.1, 27.0–147, and 58.6–172 mg/kg for Al, As, Cd, Hg, Pb, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, and Zn, respectively. Five micro elements were detected in all samples, and low levels of toxic elements indicated that the samples were safe from toxic contaminants. The results indicated that the samples collected from commercial sources pose no safety problems. Additionally, the health risk assessments showed that the provisional tolerable weekly intakes, target hazard quotients, and hazard index values of all the samples were less than 1. Thus, the consumption of the analyzed samples would not present significant health risk.