Determination of potassium bromate concentration on bread samples in Tobruk-Libya

Abstract EN

During the last century, potassium bromate KBrO3 as a strong oxidizing agent have been used extensively in the process of bread-making.

These additives have adverse effects on the nutritional value of bread.

It has been also classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as a human carcinogen and mutagen.

For this reason, the use of potassium bromate in bread and other bakery products has been banned in many countries around the world.

The US Food and Drug Agency (FDA) has set a concentration of 0.02 μg/gas permissible safe limit of potassium bromate in bread.

Therefore, it became necessary to determine the content of KBrO3 in some selected bread samples in the study area (Tobruk city, Libya).

In this study, twenty-six samples of bread from different bakeries in Tobruk have been investigated.

The qualitative method was based on the presence of a visible color resulted from the reaction of bromate with iodide (potassium iodide solution).

The quantitative testto measure the concentration of KBrO3 in all samples was performed using spectrophotometric method.

It was found that all of the analyzed samples contained deferent levels of potassium bromate.

It worth noted that the least concentration of potassium bromatewas 85 times higher than thepermissible safe level, while the highest concentration was 310 times higher which considers to belife- threatening and unsafe for human consumption