engleski

Determination of toxic elements in croatian olive oils by ETA-AAS

Olive oil is the edible oil obtained from the fruit of the olive tree Olea europea sativa. This vegetable oil is the fat of choice in the Mediterranean area, where the diet is said to be the reason for the lower incidence of coronary heart disease and certain cancers 1. A possibility of toxic metal entry into olive oils other than the technological ones is the environmental exposure to a large variety of elements. They arrive in the olive plant via deposition as well as bioaccumulation from the soil due to natural metal sources and environmental pollution [2]. For this study Croatian virgin olive oils from fourteen different regions in Croatia were investigated. Toxic metals were determined by ETA-AAS. Sample preparation was performed by microwave assisted decomposition of the olive oil in closed vessels using a mixture of nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide [3]. With the proposed method Cu and Al were found in the concentration range of 0.1 - 1.5 μg/g with relative standard deviations of about 3 - 10%. Cr and Pb concentrations in all the samples analyzed were below the limit of detection (< 1ng/g) [4]. 1 L. Lipworth et al., Preventive Medicine 26 (1997) 181-190 ; F. Visioli et al., J. Agric. Food Chem. 46 (1998) 4292-4296. 2 L. Laurent et al., Analysis of food constituents, John Wiley & Sons, 1997, pp. 85 - 90 ; L. Allen, et al., J. Amer. Oil Chem. Soc., 1998 75 (1998) 477-481. 3 I. Juranovic et al., J. Anal. At. Spectrom. 18 (2003) 54-58. [4] M. Zeiner et al., Microchem. J. (2004) submitted.

Olive oil; toxic metals; ETA-AAS

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