REFERENCE MATERIALS FOR FOOD ANALYSIS LABORATORIES IN INDIA

An attempt has been made to prepare a Secondary Reference Material for heavy metals in milk powder. from fresh milk obtained locally, two ba tches of milk powder have been prepared by pasteurising, homogenising, evaporating and spray drying. One of the batches, treated as an exper imental batch, was spiked before the preparation with lead, cadmium an d arsenic solutions (imported BDH standards) at a level about 1 mg/kg. After spray drying, both batches were packed under nitrogen using a p olyester-aluminium/polyethylene foil as inner pouch and an outer cover of metallised polyester/polyethylene as a supporting film. Preliminar y data have been obtained for the concentrations of Pb, Cd and As in b oth batches using acid digestion and flame AAS and UV/Vis spectrophoto metry.