Planta Med 2016; 82 - OA39
DOI: 10.1055/s-0036-1578609

Essential And Non-Essential Trace Elements In Nutraceuticals

A Raab 1, J Nelson 3, M Stiboller 2, P Franzmann 1, Z Gajdosechova 1, J Feldmann 1
  • 1TESLA-Trace Element Speciation Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 3UE, Scotland, U.K.
  • 2University of Graz, Institute of Chemistry – Department of Analytical Chemistry, Universitätsplatz 1/1, 8010 Graz, Austria
  • 3Agilent Technologies, Inc., 5301 Stevens Creek Blvd, Santa Clara CA 95051, USA

The term nutraceuticals includes a range of products like vitamin and mineral supplements, botanicals (garlic) or animal products (fish oil) which are thought to have positive effects on health. Strict guidelines with regard to quality of ingredients and manufacturing are applicable in the pharmaceutical industry, but food guidelines which apply to nutraceuticals are currently less well defined.

We used ICP-MS/MS to study the elemental composition of a range of such products from the UK and USA including garlic, algae, fish and krill oil, none of which was specifically recommended as a mineral supplement. The list of determined elements included not only essential elements like iron, copper and zinc, but also the non-essential or outright toxic elements like aluminium, cadmium, antimony and arsenic. For the quantification of some elements different reaction gas modes were used to reduce/remove possible molecular interferences (e.g. Vanadium, Arsenic).

Non-essential elements were found in these products though in the majority of these, the results did not represent potentially worrisome amounts. The amounts of essential elements indicated that consumption of some nutraceuticals will contribute significantly to the overall intake of these elements when the products are consumed according to the recommendations of the manufacturer. In some cases overall exposure to these essential elements looked high when compared with recommended daily intake. Iron and iodine were significant in this respect.

Additionally, since it is well known that arsenic toxicity depends on the molecular species present, inorganic arsenic was determined in all samples. The method used for this survey was an in-house developed hydride generation ICP-MS/MS method without chromatography applied directly to sample extracts prepared in 1% nitric acid. The content of inorganic arsenic in nutraceuticals is regulated in some countries. It was found that the level of inorganic arsenic in some samples particularly of algae containing products is above the Chinese and the Australian permissible limit. Most of the fish and krill oil samples in contrast did not contain significant amounts of inorganic arsenic despite high levels of total arsenic present.