MONITORING OF AIR POLLUTION AND ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITION OF HEAVY METALS BY ANALYSIS OF HONEY

• Main Authors: Silvia Čéryová, Juraj Tóth, Tomáš Tóth, Ján Tomáš, Peter Lazor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Slovak University of Agriculture 2012-02-01
• Series: Journal of Microbiology, Biotechnology and Food Sciences
• Subjects: honey; contamination of honey; heavy metals; Slovakian regions
• Online Access: http://www.jmbfs.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Lazor.pdf

Honey is an important food for the human nutrition. Changes in the quality of bee honey are also caused by the contamination with micro-polluting agents, toxic to consumers. Heavy metals in honey are of interest not only for quality control, but can be used also as an environmental indicator. In this work honey samples were collected in different places of Slovakia. From the experimental results the average values for concentration heavy metals in honey in site Prievidza 2006 - 2008 were: 0.0599 mg.kg-1 As, 0.0948 mg.kg-1 Cd, 0.0747 mg.kg-1 Cr, 0.0394 mg.kg-1 Hg and 0.1252 mg.kg-1 Pb; in site Šaľa 2006 - 2008: 0.0862 mg.kg-1 As, 0.0942 mg.kg-1 Cd, 0.0736 mg.kg-1 Cr, 0.0341 mg.kg-1 Hg and 0.1626 mg.kg-1 Pb. The results suggested that honey could be used to detect contaminating agents in the environment.