Preliminary assessment of heavy metals in street vended foods in the surrounding of elementary school area in Bandung city, Indonesia.

Street vended foods are ready to eat foods sold by the vendors in the street and easily found in the school surrounding area. The availability and affordability of street vended foods made it widely consumed by large of population include children, especially when it is packaged attractively. Unfortunately, the safety of street vended foods especially related to the heavy metal contaminant is still unknown. Therefore, assessing the heavy metal level of street vended foods that widely consumed by children need to carried out. A number of 24 street vended food samples were collected in four elementary school surrounding area in Bandung city. The determination of heavy metal content in this food samples was conducted by neutron activation analysis and atomic absorption spectrometry as well. The quality of analytical results was evaluated using Standard Reference Material (SRM) NIST 1548a Typical Diet and 1567a Wheat Flour. Compare to the maximum permissible limit established by Indonesian Food and Drug Control Agency (BPOM), it was found that Cu, Hg and Zn concentration of street vended foods were below their maximum permissible limit. However, health risk assessment through Hazard Index (HI) formulation indicated that children in Bandung city may possess non-carcinogenic health risk due to heavy metals from the consumption of several street vended foods since the HI value are in the range of 0.06 – 2.32 with more than 10% of the foods observed were have HI > 1. These may be harmful situation to the children health. Further supervision of the preparation and handling of the vended foods are needed and guidance about the importance of hygiene and quality of vended foods to the vendors need to be improved.