Cadmium pollution, still a public health and food safety problem in Romania

  Cadmium is a potential environmental hazard for different types of foods, originating in polluted water, soil and air, as well as in inadequate food containers, where it can be used in the composition of pigments, coatings, plating, and as stabilizer for plastic. Cadmium is highly toxic and presumably carcinogenetic in humans, accumulating in tissues when chronically ingested.

We evaluated the cadmium content in various samples of vegetables, fruit, eggs, diary  and meat products from 4 areas of Romania, by means of atomic absorption spectrometry and compared them with the European Committee regulation  466/2001 for the maximum allowed limit of cadmium in foods.

The results showed that the majority of the samples from each category and each area raised above the limits, thus becoming a real toxic threat for the consumers. The “winners” for high cadmium content were the capital of the country, Bucharest, and a tourists` county, located in a mountainous area. As products, the “leaders” were meat products and some vegetables .

We concluded that even after entering in the EU and harmonizing  laws concerning food safety , we can find different types of products contaminated with cadmium in a quantity greater than the  maximum allowed limit. This fact is alarming, because cadmium is high even in products consumed by sensible groups of population (diary products- children) or in vegetables or fruit, foods highly advocated for consume because of their valuable nutrient content.

We recommended a better inventory of possible sources of cadmium contamination, throughout the entire line from “farm , to fork” (synthetic fertilizers or fungicides with cadmium,  vehicles used to transport foods,  industrial installations used in processing foods,  food additives, etc) and the strengthening of the procedures of evaluation of heavy metal contamination of food.