Risk Assessment and Determination of Heavy Metals in Home Meal Replacement Products by Using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry and Direct Mercury Analyzer

Abstract

This study quantified six heavy metals (Pb, Cd, As, Sn, Hg, and Me-Hg) in home meal replacement products. Satisfactory linearity (R2 > 0.99), recovery (80.65–118.02%), limits of detection (0.02–2.81 µg/kg), limits of quantification (0.05–8.51 µg/kg), accuracy (80.49–119.87%), precision (0.26–14.93%), standard uncertainty (0.082–0.321%) and relative standard uncertainty (0.084–0.320%) of the six heavy metals were obtained. The average concentration of the six heavy metals was 8.87 µg/kg. Heavy metal concentrations were converted to food intake data of 0.009 µg/kg to recalculate the 95th percentile food intake data (g/day) of individual heavy metals. These were then divided by age group to evaluate the average exposure to heavy metals and determine the 95th percentile of exposure from daily intake and for the whole population, of home meal replacement products. The chronic daily intake amount of six heavy metals was 1.60 × 10−2 µg/kg/day. Based on total chronic daily intake values, the risk and margin of exposure of each of the heavy metals was 9.13 × 107, demonstrating that intake associated with home meal replacement products is negligible.