Acacia caven pollen from South America. An useful bio-indicator of environmental pollution. A healthy food supplement?

CRISTINA BARCIA; SOLEDAD CERRUTTI; DANTE MARTINEZ; SONIA BARBERIS

International Journal of Environmental Engineering IJEE

IRED Headquarters, NY, USA

Lugar: New York; Año: 2016 vol. 3 p. 119 - 122

1756-8463

The aim of this work is to evaluate themineral and heavy metal contents of Acacia caven(Mol.) Molina pollen, a South American plantwhich grows in the Northwest of Argentina, forstudying its behavior as bio-indicator ofenvironmental pollution and their consequences asdietary supplement. Mineral and heavy metalcontents were determined by flame atomicabsorption / emission spectrometry (FAAS andFAES, respectively), inductively coupled plasmaoptical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) andhydride generation atomic absorptionspectrometry (HG-AAS). The obtained resultsdemonstrated that some mineral contents (K, Ca,P, Fe, Mg, Na, Zn and Se) of Acacia caven pollenmet the requirements of both, the Food andNutritional Board (FNB) and the ArgentineanAlimentarius Codex (AAC) to be used as a dietarysupplement. Nevertheless, some heavy metalsanalyzed such as Al, Cu, Ni, V, Cr and Cd,exceeded the upper levels (UL) established by FNBand AAC, probably due to environmentalcontamination. Beyond the high level of someheavy metals found in the Acacia caven pollen, thiscould be an important dietary supplement by theirhigh Fe and low Na contents. Considering that thesuggested doses of commercial pollen bypharmacists and companies advice is 13.5 g/day,an only doses of Acacia caven pollen would satisfythe recommended daily intake (RDI) of Fe givenby FNB for an adult individual. In spite of thispromising date, further studies on the Febioavailability and heavy metal toxicity fromAcacia caven pollen should be carried out forbeing used this pollen as dietary supplement