Toxic Metals and Trace Elements in Artisanal Honeys from the Canary Islands Saray Díaz 1 & Soraya Paz 1 & Carmen Rubio 1 & Ángel J. Gutiérrez 1 & Dailos González-Weller 2 & Consuelo Revert 1 & Antonio Bentabol 3 & Arturo Hardisson 1 Received: 11 July 2018 /Accepted: 27 September 2018 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Honey is a natural product made by honey bees from the nectar of flowers or secretions produced by other living plant parts. The metal content of the honeys is related to the levels of metals in the environment. Due to the importance of honey in the human diet and the increase of environmental pollution, it is necessary to determine the content of metals in honey to evaluate the toxicological risk derived from its consumption. The objective of this study was to determine the content of 20 metals (Al, B, Ba, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, K, Li, Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Ni, Pb, Sr, V, and Zn) in different samples of artisanal honey from the Canary Islands (Spain) in order to evaluate the dietary intake derived from the consumption of these honeys. A total of 161 samples of different types of Canary honey were analyzed by ICP-OES (inductively coupled plasma–optical emission spectrometry). K (825 mg/kg) was the macroelement found in highest concentration, while B (4.25 mg/kg) was the trace element with the highest mean concentration. Al (3.33 mg/kg) was the most abundant toxic metal, followed by Pb (0.040 mg/kg) and Cd (0.002 mg/kg). A mean consumption of 25 g/day of honey mainly contributes to the recommended daily intake of Cu (1.34% adults) and K (0.67% adults). As regards the toxic metals, the contribution percentage to the TDI (tolerable daily intake) of Pb at 2.92% for adults is noteworthy. However, the consumption of honey does not imply a high intake of metals and, therefore, does pose a risk to the health of adult men and women. Keywords Honey . Metals . Bioaccumulation . Contaminants . ICP-OES . Risk assessment Introduction Honey is a natural product produced by Apis mellifera bees from the nectar of flowers or secretions from other plant parts. The bees extract the nectar and, after combining it with other specific substances, they store it in the cells of the hive for its subsequent maturation [1, 2]. The composition and, therefore, the properties of honey depend on the botanical origin of the nectar and the secretion used [3]. Honeys can accumulate metals from nectar, which in turn come from the plants that produce it [4, 5]. Studies have shown a high correlation between the content of metals in honey and their concentration of these in the environment, and thus, honey can be used as an indicator of environmental pollution [6–8]. Due to its sweet taste, honey is widely used as a sweetener, even as a substitute for sugar. The honeys have common char- acteristics in terms of their major constituents making it nec- essary to resort to their minority constituents to classify them into different types and even to detect fraud in their declared origin [3]. The concentrations of metals vary in the different types of honey, since they depend on the elemental composition of the flowers and the botanical and geographical origin of the flow- er [9, 10]. Therefore, the content of metals or trace elements in the honeys can be used to distinguish the different geograph- ical origins of the honey [3, 11–13]. The honey produced in the Canary Islands is monofloral and there is a wide variety of these honeys mainly due to the diversity of the flora on the islands as well as to their * Ángel J. Gutiérrez ajguti@ull.es 1 Department of Toxicology, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain 2 Health Inspection and Laboratory Service, Canary Health Service S/C de Tenerife, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain 3 Casa de la Miel, Unidad de Valorización de Productos Agroalimentarios, Área de Agricultura, Ganadería y Pesca, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain Biological Trace Element Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-018-1538-0