Determination of Lead, Cadmium, and Copper in Food Cans in Hilla City-Iraq

Abstract

This study aimed to detect the chemical pollution by heavy metals for several food cans common at the local markets. Determination of average concentrations of Lead, Copper, and Cadmium (ppm) for (10) different samples (three for each sample) from the food productions with metallic cans that produced locally or imported, the samples were taken randomly from the local markets of al-Hilla city at summer 2015.The results showed an existence of chemical pollution by heavy metals over the allowed limits in most of the samples, that would make these products not suitable for human consumption because they do not meet the standard.Due the huge exceeding of heavy metals concentrations according to the sequence (copper >lead > cadmium) over the allowed limits (ppm) of WHO and FAO that belong to the United Nations. The highest average of lead concentration in chickpea was (11.44), where the less average was in Altagthiyah lamb cans (1.81), and this value is already higher than the allowed limit for copper (1.5).In addition, there are chemical pollution by cadmium in the food cans that origin from seeds and vegetables (except in the olive cans with concentration of 0.08) according to their sequence of chemical pollution amount as follows: Tomato syrup >carrots > grape juice > pepsi > peas and soya seeds > chickpea > red beans by their concentrations average as follow: [0.5, 0.36, 0.34, 0.29, 0.23, 0.21, and 0.21 respectively] over the allowed limits for cadmium which is (0.1), while in contrast, the concentration of cadmium in food cans with origin of animal meat has been reached higher value than the allowed limit (0.2) for two types of cans according the following sequence: Altagthiyah lamb > Luncheon lamb, that reached to [0.34 and 0.23 respectively].