The Mercury Concentration in Spice Plants

Spice plants are popularly used as ingredients in food products. Promoting healthy eating, paying attention to the quality of products, means that organic and self-produced ingredients, whose origin growing conditions known, gaining popularity. The study determined concentration mercury (Hg) popular leafy spice plants: peppermint (Mentha piperita), common basil (Ocimum basilicum), lovage (Levisticum officinale) parsley (Petroselinum crispum). Self-grown spices ready-made commercial products were selected for study. Hg content test samples was by AAS method (AMA 254, Altec, Praha, Czech Republic). range tested ranged from 1.20 17.35 µg/kg, on average 6.95 µgHg/kg. highest recorded peppermint, 9.39 µg/kg. In grown independently, statistically significantly higher than purchased a store. There no differences non-organic spices. Commercial defined producers did not differ level