Abstract

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ASSESSMENT OF HEAVY METALS CONCENTRATION IN INDIAN AND PAKISTANI VEGETABLES

Osama Sarwar Khan, Farooq Ahmad, Adnan Skhawat Ali, Rana Muhammad Kamal and Umar Ashraf


The current research was conducted to quantify the heavy metals accumulation in vegetables imported from India and compared with same vegetables collected from vegetable market in Pakistan. Green chili, capsicum, tomato and ginger were selected to analyze their heavy metal contents by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Samples were prepared by dry ash method and wet digestion method to find out the efficient method for heavy metals analysis. Maximum concentration of heavy metals detected by dry ash method in Indian vegetables were of Cu (0.34ppm) in capsicum, Cd (0.0ppm) in capsicum, Cr (0.22ppm) in Ginger, Pb (0.22ppm) in ginger and Ni (0.14ppm) in Ginger while in Pakistani vegetables, it were of Cu (0.62ppm) in Tomato, Cd (0.04ppm) in Capsicum, Cr (0.17ppm) in Tomato, Pb (0.36ppm) in Ginger. Heavy metal contents determined by wet digestion method were of Cu (0.57ppm) in Ginger, Cd (0.01ppm) in capsicum, Cr (0.17ppm) in Ginger, Pb (0.27ppm) in capsicum while in Pakistani vegetables these were of Cu (0.19ppm) in Ginger, Cd (0.04ppm) in green chili, Cr (0.09ppm) in Tomato, Pb (0.25ppm) in Ginger. It was found that the concentrations of these heavy metals in vegetables of both the countries were within WHO/FAO permissible limits so at present these are not hazardous but long term use of these vegetables can magnify heavy metals contents in human body. For statistical analysis two factor ANOVA was run, which indicated that almost all the vegetables had accumulated heavy metals but there was a difference in the uptake of Indian and Pakistani vegetables.