Accumulation and distribution of heavy metals in soil and food crops around the ship breaking area in southern Bangladesh and associated health risk assessment

Abstract

Heavy metal pollution in agricultural soils and food crops around the ship breaking area is of great environmental and human health concern. In this work, we have spectroscopically determined the concentrations of Cd, Pb, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cr, Cu, and Ni in agricultural soils and commonly consumed vegetables, fruits, and rice grain collected from the Sitakunda ship breaking area of Chittagong, Bangladesh, in order to evaluate their contamination levels and probable human health risk with a multivariate statistical approach. Multivariate analyses such as principal component analysis and cluster analysis of the analytical data indicate a significant metal contamination in the samples which could be attributed to industrial activities such as ship breaking. The results of soil contamination evaluation indices such as enrichment factor, geo-accumulation index, and contamination factor demonstrated that the soils around the ship breaking area are mainly contaminated by Cd, Pb, Zn, and Cu while food crops were mostly contaminated by Zn, Cr, and Cu. The Pb contaminated the olive and teasle gourd while Cd contamination in rice grain was at the threshold limit for health hazard. Mn was slightly accumulated in banana. Transfer coefficient values of Cd, Zn, and Cu for almost all food crops were higher than other metals, and Cd showed the highest transfer. Estimated daily intake values for Ni exceeded the standard limit (1.3 μg kg −1 day −1). Target hazard quotient values of Cu, Zn, Pb, and Cd indicate that the local inhabitants who consume the contaminated food crops are being exposed to potential health risks.

Level of pesticides contamination in the major river systems: A review on South Asian countries perspective

“…To summarize the pollution level and understand its probable impact on the environment, we have compared all data with the critical maximum concentration, health value, and maximum acceptable value provided by the recognized organizations. Multivariate statistical approaches including Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Cluster Analysis (CA), and Pearson's Correlation Matrix (CM) were also utilized to study the interrelationships among the commonly reported pesticides and the considered South Asian river systems, and thereby to predict the probabilistic origin of the pesticides in the river systems [37,38]. The whole methodology described above is depicted briefly in the form of a flow diagram as shown in Figure 2.…”

“…Only those pesticides which are very common in use and reported at a considerable level rather than a very lower level are important to consider for evaluating the effective contamination levels along with their associated probable environmental impact in the studied rivers. For this purpose, the study of the significant associations among the pesticides and the river systems based on their concentration in the samples and also the identification of the probable sources of these chemicals in the rivers are found to be effective and helpful [37,84]. The interrelationships among the reported pesticides and their probabilistic sources in the considered river systems were identified using multivariate statistical analyses such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Cluster Analysis (CA), and Pearson's Correlation Matrix (CM) [37,38].…”

“…For this purpose, the study of the significant associations among the pesticides and the river systems based on their concentration in the samples and also the identification of the probable sources of these chemicals in the rivers are found to be effective and helpful [37,84]. The interrelationships among the reported pesticides and their probabilistic sources in the considered river systems were identified using multivariate statistical analyses such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Cluster Analysis (CA), and Pearson's Correlation Matrix (CM) [37,38]. While performing these analyses using SPSS software (version 20, IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, USA), the pesticides and their concentrations as summarized in Table 2 for the considered river water systems were utilized to ensure the statistically valid and significant outcomes from the analyses.…”

Public health vulnerability due to the exposure of dissolved metal(oid)s in tap water from a mega city (Dhaka, Bangladesh)

“…Pearson's correlation matrices were utilized to identify the associations among the analyzed elements (Tamim et al, 2016;Hasan et al, 2020), and the results are tabulated in Table S4. The strong and significant correlations among the parameters indicate their common sources of origin(s).…”

Changing Pattern of Heavy Metals Accumulation in and around in Ship breaking Area Over the 40 years and Its Impact on Fish Diversity in Adjacent Areas of Bangladesh

“…This includes an intensive level of challenging actions, starting with the elimination of all equipment's and device for cutting down and salvaging the structure of the ship. Ship breaking activities are detained accountable for the polluting of the surrounding environments and precious resources like steels along with wood products which are being recuperated for reclaim or recycling reasons [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Ship breaking may be a demanding procedure, thanks to the structural difficulty of ships and therefore the numerous ecological, safety and health related hazards concerned [9].…”