Fluoride in tea from Shandong Province, China and exposure assessment

ABSTRACT

In this study fluoride in 170 tea samples from Shandong province (China) was determined using a selective ion electrode. The fluoride concentrations ranged from 31.2 to 338 mg/kg with an average of 119 mg/kg. The mean fluoride concentrations were 164, 121, 98.7 and 96.8 mg/kg, which corresponded to Pu’erh tea, green tea, oolong tea and black tea, respectively. Moreover, 4.7% of the analysed samples exceed the legal limit of 200 mg/kg recommended by China. The estimated daily intake of fluoride via drinking tea for an adult was between 0.655 and 1.07 mg/person/day, which were lower than the provisional maximum tolerable daily intake value of 3.5 mg/person/day set by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China. In future, maintaining a surveillance programme to monitor the trend of fluoride in tea is necessary for food safety and human health.

KEYWORDS:

• Fluoride
• quantitative analysis
• tea
• exposure assessment
• food safety
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Nos. 21705095 and 21605100], and the Science and the Technology Development Programme of traditional Chinese medicine of Shandong Province [No. 2017-182].