Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Vegetable any plant part consumed for food that is not a fruit or seed, but
including mature fruits that are eaten as part of a main meal. Vegetables are an
carbohydrates, iron, calcium and other nutrients (Ivey, Lejeune, & Miller, 2012).
themeat. So, the intake of vegetables has become the main source of the
vitamins, minerals, and trace elements, and these nutrients are important
components of the human diet (Khan et al., 2008b; Zhuanget al., 2009; Amin et
nutrients, may also contain elevated concentrations of heavy metals due to high
animals and human beings when present in trace quantities, whereas others such
as Cd, As, and Cr act as carcinogens (Feiget al., 1994; Trichopoulos, 1997).
Dietary intake of heavy metals also poses risk to animals and human health.
Heavy metals such as Cd and Pb have been shown to have carcinogenic effects
process, storage and at the point of sale. For the developingcountries, the
2006).Vegetables take up heavy metals and accumulate them in their edible parts
(Sipteret al., 2008; Chary et al., 2008). Since plants take up heavy metals, due to
absorption from both polluted soil and environment, monitoring of their levels in
interactions, cell cycleand apoptosis; they are persistent and toxic, and
theyaccumulate through the food chain (Parris WEet al., 2002).When consumed
in large quantities, such metals can cause several clinical and physiological
Brooke, 2012; Panet al.,2013). Excess Cd can cause kidney stones, while excess
Level Contaminations of Food issued by WHO (WHO, 1995). Thus, value of 1/2
LOD was assigned to all results below the LOD, wherethe proportion of<LOD
consumption data and the heavy metal concentrations of the specificitem and
then dividing by body weight. The average body weight inthis study was
considered as 55.9 kg (Ge, 1992). The meanand 97.5th percentile of the daily
exposure levels were used torepresent the dietary exposure for average and high
The health risk index (HI) was calculatedby dividing daily intake of heavy metals
by their safe limits (Cuiet al., 2004).For the health of the consumers, the World
risk associated with thesemetals, the health hazard indexes (HIs) were calculated
bydividing daily intake of heavy metals by their reference doses. HIis usually
adopted to assess the health risk to hazard materials in foods (Chen et al., 2011;
(USEPA, 2002).
The researchers of this study could give insight regarding the presence of metal
in vegetables where to share with the consumers about the amount of heavy metal
available in the different type of vegetables. Based on the data and result
collected from the previous study, prevention and treatment step can be taken to
prevent any excessive metal detected in vegetable. Hopefully, it will help the
Heavy metal contamination in the vegetable is the major problem where the
contamination can occur during the agronomic process and soil and atmospheric
contamination poses a threat to its quality and safety. The excess of heavy metals
may affects the shelf life of the leafy vegetable itself and also catalysed the
sample need to be researched and established in order to detect the heavy metal
and one of the method to be explored is by using ICP and wet digestion with
digestion method and ICP. The wet digestion method uses nitric acid,
hydrogen peroxide and sulphuric acid to extract the metal that contains in