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Food and Chemical Toxicology 53 (2013) 256–262 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Food and Chemical Toxicology journal homepage: www.elsevi /locate/foodchemtox Risk assessment of heavy metals in honey consumed in Zhejiang province, southeastern China Qiao-Mei Ru, Qiang Feng, Jin-Zhe He ⇑ College of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310032, China a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: The levels of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), and mercury (Hg) in eight types Received 13 September 2012 of honey collected in China were determined. The average concentrations of the six heavy metals in Accepted 9 December 2012 the honey samples were 46.18, 1329.5, 1.34, 33.98, 13.44, and 1.65 lg kg1, respectively. All these Available online 19 December 2012 values were below the maximum allowable contaminant levels in foods (GB2762-2005) and honey (GB14963-2011) in China. The hazard quotients of individual heavy metals and the hazard index of all Keywords: six heavy metals were far below one, indicating no chronic-toxic risk from these metals for the inhabit- Heavy metal ants of Zhejiang under the current consumption rates of honey. However, the carcinogenic risk of As Honey