Chromium levels in spices and aromatic herbs.

We determined the presence of chromium in a total of 72 samples of 17 different spices and aromatic herbs. Electrothermal atomization atomic absorption spectrometry (ETA-AAS) was used to determine Cr content in the samples mineralized with HNO3 and V2O5. The analytical characteristics of the proposed method were tested, and the accuracy and precision was also verified against an NBS-certified reference material. Chromium concentrations ranged from not detectable to 1.42 micrograms/g (dry wt.) and Cr presence was detected in 95% of samples. Spices and aromatic herbs are widely consumed in the Spanish diet and in the Mediterranean diet, in general.