Cobalt content of foods and diets in a Spanish population (short communication)

The WHO Expert Committee on Food Contaminants has pointed out the need of determining the content of foods in trace elements in order to ascertain their contribution to the total intake of oligoelements through the diet. Since the contents in trace elements depend on the environmental features, it is necessary to carry out systematic determinations of trace elements in foods of local origin in order to know the exposure level of population. This work intends to study the cobalt contribution through the diet. The element intake is calculated from the cobalt content in raw foods after elimination of the non-eatable moiety by flame atomic absorption spectroscopy, after formation of a chelate with ammonium pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (APDC) and extraction with 4-methyl-2-pentanone (MIBK) according to a procedure developed and verified in a previous paper.