Abstract:
Vegetables and Fruits have many similarities with respect to their compositions, methods of
cultivation and harvesting, storage properties and processing. In the true botanical sense,
many vegetables are considered fruits. Thus, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and others were
considered as fruits. The aim of this study was to determine the levels of selected essential
and non-essential metals in three brands of canned tomato paste sold in sebeta town, oromia
state, Ethiopia. A total number of three canned tomato paste samples (Ethiopia, Oman and
China) were collected from mini Supermarket in Sebeta town by using systematic random
sampling method. A wet digestion procedure, using mixture of HCl and H2O2 was developed
for the decomposition of 0.5 g of canned tomato paste samples and flame atomic absorption
spectrometry (FAAS) was used to determine Mn, Cu, Cr, Cd, Zn, Pb, Fe, K and Ca present in
canned tomato paste sample .The one-way ANOVA showed that there is no significant
difference among the sample means at 95% confidence level in mean concentration between
all brand of canned tomato paste sample. Thus, a total of nine (9) mean concentration of
essential and non-essential metals in mg/Kg as Potassium(6.07-11.77 ),Calcium (242.01-
442.45 ), Lead (ND), Zinc(32.85-62.07), Cadmium (ND), Manganese (0.24-11.63), Iron (
168.03-360.66 ), Chromium ( ND), Copper (1.91-14.43 ) and When the performance of the
method was investigated, the ranges of RSD (0.224-12.557) , accuracy (89.80 -109.26 %)
which indicated that the method was precise and accurate. The LOQ (0.014-0.202mg/L),
LOD (0.0044-0.1758) and the regression coefficient (R2
) ranged from 0.9925 to 0.9989
showing good linearity. Therefore, the findings of this study was indicated that the levels of
concentrations of heavy metals in the tomato paste purchased from mini Supermarket in
Sebeta town did not constitute any serious threat presently .This is because most parameters
were within the permissible limits of WHO and still acceptable and conducive to human
bodies.
