A study was undertaken to determine the contents of trace metals in 60 topsoils and 80 brinjal fruits samples from a famous brinjal-producing area of Bangladesh using atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The study also looked at soil pollution levels, dietary intake of nutritionally important trace elements, and human health risks from toxic metals induced by dermal soil exposure and consumption of brinjal. The content of Pb, Ni, Cd, Cu, Fe, Mn, and Zn in brinjal fruits harvested from farmer′s fields ranged from 0.204–0.729, 0.031–0.212, < 0.010–0.061, 1.819–2.668, 3.267–5.910, < 0.010–0.866 and 2.160–3.846 µg g-1, respectively, while the amount of Cr was negligible. The calculated enrichment factors showed that 70, 50, and 25% of soil sampling sites had values in the 2.00–5.00 range for Pb, Zn, and Cd, respectively, while 30% of sites had values > 5.00 for Cd, indicating moderate to significant enrichment of these metals in the soil. The study also revealed that brinjal consumption provides a tiny amount of nutritionally important trace elements required for an adult human. Regarding the computed incremental lifetime cancer risks (ILCR), the study revealed that the values for Pb and Ni in all samples and Cd in 40% of samples were several hundred times higher for males and females than the USEPA threshold level due to oral ingestion of brinjal fruits. In contrast, dermal exposures to soil trace elements were within an acceptable range. The PCA results revealed that the contents of Cd, Pb, Ni, and Cu in soils showed strong positive correlations with those elements present in brinjal. The current study suggests future traceability research, focusing on pinpointing potential entry routes for toxic elements into the vegetable food chain.

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Industrialisation and unplanned urbanisation in different city areas of Bangladesh have greatly distorted the natural water resources. The present study was undertaken to evaluate ionic contamination level including heavy metals in effluents, surface and groundwater of Rangpur city, Bangladesh. Total 29 samples (24 effluents and surface water and 5 groundwater) were collected from the city area and analysed for various physicochemical parameters at the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh during January to September 2017. The concentrations of heavy metals (Fe, Mn, Cu, Pb, Cr, and Zn) in water samples were measured by an atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS). Major cation chemistry showed their dominance in the order of Na +

Fifteen (15) fish species were collected from three (3) locations of the Brahmaputra River to determine heavy metals content in fish flesh, and to assess potential human health risk through consumption of those fishes. The contents of heavy metals in aqueous extract of different fish species were determined by an atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS) at the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Bangladesh Agricultural University, during the period from March to June, 2018. The concentrations of Mn, Zn, Cu, Pb, Cd and Cr in different fish species ranged from 41.70-376.62, 38.98-279.08, 3.19-47.91, 2.20-3.73, 0.19-1.20 and 0.59-2.40 mg kg-1, respectively. The study results revealed that the edible portion of fish species of the river contained reasonably higher amount of Mn, Zn, Pb, Cr and Cu compared to some other previous studies carried out elsewhere with freshwater fishes. Among the fish species, mola (Amblypharyngodon mola) showed the highest metal pollution index (20.12) followed by chela (Salmophasia bacaila) (17.72), chanda (Chanda nama) (16.78) and chingri (Macrobrachium sp.) (15.83), while baim (Macrognathus aculeatus) exhibited the lowest (6.79). The calculated daily metal intake for Pb, Mn and Cd for both male and female were higher than that of upper tolerable intake level, which indicates consumption of common fishes of this river, is not safe. Similarly, target hazard quotient (THQ) values for Mn surpassed 5.0 for both male and female, and the same value for Pb also surpassed 5.0 for female indicate that the exposed population are unsafe. The study results also revealed that all individual THQ values of other metals for both male and female surpassed 1, which means exposed population are in level of concern interval. In Bangladesh freshwater river fishes are more popular than farm fishes. However, the study results recommend to aware people about heavy metal contents before consuming fish species of a polluted river system.