Date of Award

Spring 2013

Degree Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Criminal Justice

School

Criminal Justice, Forensic Science, and Security

Committee Chair

Thomas Pittman

Committee Chair Department

Criminal Justice

Committee Member 2

Kuppareddi Balamuragan

Committee Member 2 Department

Criminal Justice

Abstract

The mineral iron is one of the most common minerals on Earth; not only is iron found in the atmosphere, water, and plants, it is an essential mineral needed for the human body. Children need iron at a young age to ensure proper growth and development of myelin, to promote oxygen transportation within red blood cells, and to assist in Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and Ribonucleic acid (RNA). With iron readily available in children's multivitamins, iron toxicity can become an issue when taking too many tablets. With two types of brands, generic and name brand, parents should be aware of the quality,-along with quantity, of the iron concentrations of the vitamins. This experiment focused on comparing the observed iron concentrations with the expected iron concentrations between generic and name brand children's multivitamins. All samples were diluted equally and analyzed with a graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometer. Comparison of the correlation of relative variation (CRV) shows that within each specific brand, name brand vitamins had less variation and, thus, more precise iron concentrations than the generic brand vitamins, which showed iron concentrations within each generic brand multivitamin to be greatly varied. Comparison of the difference of means (mg) shows that the observed iron concentrations for name brand children's multivitamins were very close to the expected iron concentration, which expresses accuracy for the name brand children's multivitamins, while generic brand multivitamins had a large difference of means resulting in generic brands showing 4-6 milligrams of iron less than what was expected per tablet.

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