Abstract: Lead in popcorn that is prepared in traditional process and modern process is determined to provide scientific basis to the security of food. The microwave digestion and wet digestion are adopted to prepare the sample, and the amount of lead in popcorn are detected by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. The results show that the lead in the popcorn made by traditional process reaches up to1.9830mg/kg while that in the modernly-made popcorn goes up to 0.9930mg/kg. Lead contents in 4 samples are significantly higher than the national standard. Therefore,it is suggested that the popcorn should not be ate too much. The relative standard deviation of microwave digestion method is less than 4% and the recovery is 90.04%~93.57%. Home microwave digestion method can produce high precision and dependable results in measuring the content of lead. Particularly, there is more outstanding advantages at the safety operability and environmental protection.

Key words: popcorn, lead, flame atomic absorption spectrometry, microwave digestion, wet digestion