Heavy metals in Chinese raw cow milk: spatial distribution and relationships with silage and environmental factors
type: CreativeWork
description: Milk and dairy products play important roles in human diets. Owing to the increasing consumption of milk and dairy products in China, the enhanced national production of milk and the presence of polluting industrial activities that could directly or indirectly contaminate milk with heavy metals, there is a need to screen for the presence of heavy metals and to assess the potential health risks of consuming contaminated milk. Therefore, this thesis conducts a large-scale research to study the spatial variability of heavy metals contents in raw cow’s milk produced in the 11 main producing areas in China. This research also estimates from a limited set of records the relationships between the content of heavy metals in individual cow’s milk, drinking water, feed and soil to isolate pathways potentially responsible for the milk contamination. Moreover, this thesis aims also to assess the human health risk of consuming contaminated milk by calculating using theoretical approach the hazard quotient (HQ). As the analysis cost to measure the contents of heavy metals in milk is high, there is an interest to find a cheap proxy. This one could be related to the milk composition. Therefore, the correlation values between the heavy metals’ contents in milk and the main milk components were also estimated in this thesis. The concentrations of heavy metals were measured in 1,043 bulk milk samples, 60 individual cow milk samples, 46 drinking water samples, 6 silage and soil samples and 40 TMR samples. All samples were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry after microwave assisted acid digestion, except for soil samples, which were analyzed by atomic absorption spectrometry and atomic fluorescence spectrometry. The main results of this thesis are as follows: (1) The average concentrations of Pb, As and Cd in bulk milk were 1.74 μg/L, 0.32 μg/L and 0.05 μg/L, thus suggesting limited cause for concern regarding heavy metal contamination in milk produced in China. On…
abstract: Milk and dairy products play important roles in human diets. Owing to the increasing consumption of milk and dairy products in China, the enhanced national production of milk and the presence of polluting industrial activities that could directly or indirectly contaminate milk with heavy metals, there is a need to screen for the presence of heavy metals and to assess the potential health risks of consuming contaminated milk. Therefore, this thesis conducts a large-scale research to study the spatial variability of heavy metals contents in raw cow’s milk produced in the 11 main producing areas in China. This research also estimates from a limited set of records the relationships between the content of heavy metals in individual cow’s milk, drinking water, feed and soil to isolate pathways potentially responsible for the milk contamination. Moreover, this thesis aims also to assess the human health risk of consuming contaminated milk by calculating using theoretical approach the hazard quotient (HQ). As the analysis cost to measure the contents of heavy metals in milk is high, there is an interest to find a cheap proxy. This one could be related to the milk composition. Therefore, the correlation values between the heavy metals’ contents in milk and the main milk components were also estimated in this thesis. The concentrations of heavy metals were measured in 1,043 bulk milk samples, 60 individual cow milk samples, 46 drinking water samples, 6 silage and soil samples and 40 TMR samples. All samples were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry after microwave assisted acid digestion, except for soil samples, which were analyzed by atomic absorption spectrometry and atomic fluorescence spectrometry. The main results of this thesis are as follows: (1) The average concentrations of Pb, As and Cd in bulk milk were 1.74 μg/L, 0.32 μg/L and 0.05 μg/L, thus suggesting limited cause for concern regarding heavy metal contamination in milk produced in China. On…
author: Zhou, Xuewei
language: en
keywords: milk, heavy metal, contamination, water, silage, soil, correlation, Life sciences, Agriculture & agronomy, Sciences du vivant, Agriculture & agronomie
license: http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
date published: 2019-10-28
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:49:39Z
provider: Université de Liège
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: ULiège - Université de Liège