Concentration, source identification and potential human health risk assessment of heavy metals in chicken meat and egg in Bangladesh

Abstract

Chicken meat and hen egg are very popular foodstuffs around the world and highly consumed as curry, fast food, processed food, etc. assuming a promising source of protein. In the present study, the concentrations of Pb, Cd, Cr, As, Hg, Mn, Fe, and Zn in nationally representative samples of chicken meat and hen egg were determined and found in the range of 0.03–2.73, 0.01–0.015, 0.025–0.67, 0.04–0.06, 0.01–0.015, 0.15–0.63, 2.50–38.6, and 1.02–19.4 mg/kg-fw, respectively. The results demonstrated that only Pb exceeded the maximum allowable concentration (MAC) for dietary food. Multivariate statistical analyses depicted that anthropogenic activities were the major source of heavy metals in the investigated foodstuffs. Human health risks associated with the dietary intake of these metals through the consumption of chicken meat and hen egg were evaluated in terms of estimated daily intake (EDI), non-carcinogenic risk of individual heavy metal by target hazard quotient (THQ), total target hazard quotient (TTHQ) for combined metals and carcinogenic risk (CR) for lifetime exposure. The calculated values of EDI, THQ, TTHQ, and CR were below their respective permissible benchmarks indicating the safe consumption of the investigated foodstuffs with respect to heavy metal contamination.

Human health risk assessment of edible body parts of chicken through heavy metals and trace elements quantitative analysis

“…The liver tissue had the highest zinc concentration (23.755±4.3 mg/kg), while the breast meat of chicken had the lowest concentration (4.452±0.6 mg/kg). In comparison to [38], the Zn concentrations of this study were low [45]. The Zn concentrations of this study were higher than the result from [54].…”

“…The mean Chromium values in the muscle were lower than the results (2.17 ± 0.66 mg kg -1 ) obtained by [10], (0.56 mg kg -1 ) obtained by [40], (2.4±0.75 mg kg -1 ) obtained by [37], (3.976±2.937 mg kg -1 ) obtained by [53] and (3.6±1.3 mg kg -1 ) obtained by [41]. The mean concentration of Chromium obtained in this study is higher than in the study of [36,38,54]. The highest level of Cr was detected in chicken brain samples (1.412 mg/ kg), which is less than the finding obtained by [53].…”

“…The maximum Pb concentration of 4.943 mg/kg was found in brain samples collected from the Madhya Badda Kacha Bazar area, and the lowest value was obtained from liver samples collected from the Mohammadpur area of DNCC. The concentration of lead in chicken muscle samples was higher compared to the studies done by [17,[35][36][37][38] and lower compared to that of [15,[39][40][41]. Other investigators recorded the same results (0.49 mg kg-1) from liver samples [12].…”