Heavy metals may cause deleterious effects on human health upon ingestion of foodstuffs contaminated with unsafe levels. This was our motivation to determined the concentrations of heavy metals; lead, cadmium, nickel, manganese and zinc in some of cereal grains and wide variety of foodstuffs in Assiut Governorate, Egypt. The obtained data revealed that wheat grains contained the highest level of lead, while peanut contain the highest mean values of Ni, Mn and Zn. Cadmium could not be detected in all analyzed cereal grains and peanut samples. Mean values of Pb in snack sources ranged from 0.051 ± 0.057 to 9.81 ± 0.472 mg/kg, while Cd mean values ranged from 0.092 ± 0.16 to 0.544 ± 0.83 mg/kg. The maximum levels of Ni, Mn and Zn in the different snack sources ranged from 2.69 - 5.38, 5.00 - 32.22 and 19.80 - 49.24 mg/kg, respectively. Pb and Cd levels ranged from 1.526 - 2.104 and 0.044 - 0.640 mg/kg in pop corn, respectively. Ni, Mn and Zn levels in pop corn samples ranged from 1.28 to 6.19, 4.95 to 16.48 and 12.50 to 43.02 mg/ kg, respectively. Both Pb and Cd could not be detected in corn flakes samples. However, the highest levels of Zn in comparison with that of pop corn and baby food samples were recorded. All baby food samples contained Pb levels that vary from 2.47 to 3.58 mg/kg and, Cd levels that were non-detectable to 0.78 mg/kg. On the other hand, baby food samples had the highest level of Mn followed by pop corn then corn flacks. Wheat flour (72% extraction) contains the lowest mean value of Pb and Ni comparing with the other wheat milled fractions. However, the highest mean values of both elements were found in fine bran. Cd was not detected in all wheat mill fractions.
Concerning the health hazards to the consumers especially in early life, none of corn samples exceed the recommended limit of Pb, but all wheat and peanut samples exceed maximum Egyptian permissible limit. Snacks were highly contaminated with Pb because five sources (43.75% from total samples) contain levels above the maximum Egyptian limit. All wheat-based products (Baby foods) and milled wheat fractions and 33% of pop corn exceed the limit for their Pb content. About 47.7% of tested snacks, 33.3% of baby foods and 16.7% of pop corn samples have Cd levels above 0.1 mg/kg, which is the maximum Egyptian permissible limit. The study indicates that snacks as corn products, wheat and its fractions, and peanut showed high levels of Pb, in addition to Cd in snacks. Health hazards of these metals are fully discussed.