The content of lead in herbal drugs and tea samples

Abstract

Heavy metals are highly toxic to living organisms even in low concentrations owing to their cumulative effect. In this study the overall content of lead in herbal drugs was determined, as well as the content of lead which was released from tested drugs during the preparation of tea drinks. To determine the content of toxic lead, the highly sensitive microanalytical technique of the potentiometric stripping analysis (PSA) with oxygen as the oxidant was used. The lowest overall content of lead was detected for chamomile and ranged from 0. 73 to 0. 77 μg/g, while the greatest content of lead was determined in the samples of the frangula bark, and yielded approximately 3 μg/g. The lead content in the prepared tea drinks ranged from 0. 26 to 1. 23 μg/g and depended on the manner in which tea drink was prepared. All of the herbal drugs in this study contain a certain amount of the toxic metal lead, but at the same time, the contents were below the levels prescribed for this metal. The content of lead released from the herbal drug into the tea drink was three to five times lower than those of the overall content of this metal. © 2013 Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Wien.