Chemical Evaluation of Some Selected Metal Composition in Edible Salt

Abstract

It is important to assess the quality of salt as salt is the most used food additive worldwide. Determination of metallic elements of salt samples which were purchased from retail outlets of Ambalangoda were done by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry. All the samples complied with SLS 79: 2014 (Food Grade Salt Granular Form) and SLS 80: 2014 (Food Grade Salt powdered Form) with respect to arsenic, cadmium and copper as arsenic and cadmium levels were lesser than 0.5 mg/kg and copper levels of samples were lesser than 2.0 mg/kg. However, two samples did not comply with above standards as lead content was greater than the maximum limit (2.0 mg/kg). One sample contained 0.4 mg/kg of mercury content which was four times greater than maxim limit for mercury (0.1 mg/kg). Beryllium, Cobalt, Selenium, Silver, Rubidium, Cesium, Thallium, Uranium, Vanadium, Zinc and Gallium were lesser than 0.1mg/kg in salt samples that were tested. Concentration of Aluminum, Manganese, Strontium, Barium and Nickel varies from <0.1 to 18.7, <0.1to 4.8, <0.1to 45.3, <0.1 to14.6 and <0.1to2.9 mg/kg consecutively. Although exact reason is not clear,all samples except one sample contained a higher amount of strontium content with respect to that of other metals. Even though minute in quantity, chromium is available in 82% of the samples which were tested. Helium mode of ICP MS seems to be a reliable method to analyze metals in salt as percentage of recovery is in between 80% to 120% for most of the metals