scholarly journals Food Salt Characterization in Terms of Radioactivity and Metals Contamination

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (14) ◽  
pp. 2882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Caridi ◽  
Maurizio Messina ◽  
Alberto Belvedere ◽  
Maurizio D’Agostino ◽  
Santina Marguccio ◽  
...  

The analysis of food salt is very important because of its high consumption by the population, for both medicinal and nutritional use. In this study, nine different samples of food salt (Cyprus black, Himalayan pink, Hawaii red, iodized, hyposodic iodized, Maldon smoked sea, common sea, Breton sea and Persia blue), coming from large Italian retailers and employed by people for different cooking food purposes, were investigated through High Purity Germanium (HPGe) Gamma Spectrometry in order to evaluate the anthropogenic (137Cs) and natural (40K) radioisotopes activity concentration, and used Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) in order to assess any possible metals contamination by a comparison between Cu, As, Cd, Hg and Pb concentrations and the limits set by the Italian Legislation. The evaluation of dose levels due to the salt ingestion for the age category higher than 17 years was performed taking into account the human body daily need of about 10 g of salt, and in the precautionary hypothesis, this need was satisfied from a single type of salt. All obtained results are under allowable levels (1 mSv/year), thus excluding the risk of ionizing radiation effects on humans. Regarding to the metals concentration, experimental results show that it is lower than the contamination threshold values, thus excluding their presence as pollutants.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (21) ◽  
pp. 4584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caridi ◽  
Pappaterra ◽  
Belmusto ◽  
Messina ◽  
Belvedere ◽  
...  

: Wine is an alcoholic drink, largely used to accompany food, with a key role in the protective effects on cardiovascular diseases. This study was developed to investigate radioisotopes and heavy metal content of twenty red, rose and white Italian wines, belonging to controlled origin denomination (DOC) geographic areas of the Calabria region, south of Italy. High Purity Germanium (HPGe) Gamma Spectrometry was employed to evaluate anthropogenic (137Cs) and natural (40K) radionuclides specific activity. Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) was used to assess any possible heavy metals contamination by a comparison between Cu, Zn, Pb, B, As and Cd concentrations with the limits set by the Italian Legislation. Calculated annual effective doses due to the ingestion of investigated samples are under allowable levels (1 mSv/year), thus excluding the risk of ionizing radiation effects on humans. Regarding to the metals concentration, experimental results show that they are lower than the contamination threshold values, thus excluding their presence as pollutants.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingo Strenge ◽  
Carsten Engelhard

<p>The article demonstrates the importance of using a suitable approach to compensate for dead time relate count losses (a certain measurement artefact) whenever short, but potentially strong transient signals are to be analysed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Findings strongly support the theory that inadequate time resolution, and therefore insufficient compensation for these count losses, is one of the main reasons for size underestimation observed when analysing inorganic nanoparticles using ICP-MS, a topic still controversially discussed.</p>


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