Measuring and comparing the concentration of heavy metals (arsenic, cobalt, cadmium, lead and mercury) in canned foods (strong acid, acid, low acid) in Ahvaz city

The presence of heavy metals such as arsenic, cobalt, cadmium, lead and mercury in canned food is of great importance from the point of view of their toxicity and nature, and it covers a wide range of food. The presence of these metals in canned products is sometimes the source of the food, the type of can or the possibility of corrosion of the inner body of the used can is attributed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to measure and compare the concentration of heavy metals in canned food (strong acid, acid, low acid). In order to analyze the data, descriptive statistics methods were used to compare the mean and difference between the data, the one-way multivariate variance measurement and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test were used to ensure the normality of the data and if there was a significant difference between the data , then Tukey's test was performed to separate the data. The results of this research showed that the average concentration of heavy metals was in the order of lead > mercury > cobalt > arsenic > cadmium, and among the available metals, lead with a total average of 0.2670 ± 0.019723 mg/ kg had the highest value and cadmium had the lowest value with an average of 0.0028±0.0049. Compared to international standards and other studies, all metals except lead were lower than the maximum value. Although the concentration of these metals in canned food samples was acceptable but it is necessary to pay attention to the factors that increase the presence of these metals in canned goods in order to control them and achieve a high-quality product .