Ecological and health risk assessment of heavy metals in soil and Chinese herbal medicines

Abstract

As medicinal plants can accumulate harmful metals from the native soil, people's consumption of these materials may cause the human body to accumulate toxic metal elements. This has given rise to people’s concerns about the quality and safety of Chinese medicinal materials. This research aims to determine the levels of Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Cd, Hg and Pb in four medicinal plant species ( Aster tataricus L.f., Salvia miltiorrhiza Bge , Radix Aucklandiae, Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi ) and their native soil. All samples were collected from Qian’an city, beside Yanshan Mountain Range in Tangshan city, east Hebei Province, north China. The contents of heavy metals we detected in the soil conformed to the current limits. However, the Cd and Hg in the soil had a very high potential ecological risk because of their contents higher than the base level of local soil. The contents of Cu, Cd, Hg and Pb in some medicinal herbs exceeded the standards. The content of Cu in Radix Aucklandiae exceeded the standard by 3 times, and others exceeded the standard by less than one time. The comprehensive health risk assessment of heavy metals with chronic non-carcinogenic effects for human body showed that none of the four medicinal herbs can create a health risk. Thus, there is no strong positive correlation between heavy metal pollution in medicinal herbs and that in the native soil. Further research should be investigated to the connection between the heavy metal levels in the soil and plants, and the comprehensive effects of soil, air and irrigation water on heavy metal pollution of Chinese herbal medicines. We also recommend that Chinese herbal medicines should be cultivated and gathered only from controlled or uncontaminated areas. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10653-021-00978-z.

Environmental Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Selected Medicinal Herbs and Spices

“…When the target hazard quotients less than 1, indicated that there is no potential adverse effects of non-carcinogenic risk of consumers (USEPA, 1986; Zhang et al, 2018; Meng et al, 2022).…”

Contamination and Health Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Soil Surrounding an Automobile Industry factory in JiaXing, China

“…In this survey, the downwind soil around an auto parts company in Jiaxing was collected in three layers, and a total of 30 sampling data were analyzed regionally. According to the average value of the soil in the Hangzhou-Jiaxing-Huzhou Plain as the background value and the standard values of various elements (Meng and Wang et al, 2022;Shao-cheng and Yu-cheng et al, 2023;Xu and Huang et al, 2023), specified in the secondary standard of the Soil Environmental Quality Standard GB 15618-1995 (pH<6.5), the pollution degree of heavy metals can be simply and intuitively displayed by using the multiple of exceeding the standard, The coefficient of variation reflects the interference of human activities on heavy metal content. To investigate the overall pollution status of heavy metals around Jiaxing Automotive Parts Company and the impact of their location and distance from the pollution source, the average values of heavy metal content in the downwind direction of the study area and the heavy metal content at three different sampling depths were measured.…”

Plantas medicinais e fitoterápicos regulamentados no Brasil: risco de toxicidade por metais pesados

“…Atualmente, têm ocorrido uma crescente preocupação no meio científico com a segurança e a qualidade (Zeiner & Cindrić, 2017) inerente à toxicidade de metais pesados em medicamentos à base de plantas, e isso é ilustrado pelos vários estudos realizados em países Asiáticos, como a China (Kong et al, 2020;Luo et al, 2021;Meng et al, 2021), Paquistão (Khan et al, 2021), Índia (Subramanian et al, 2012) e Filipinas (Solidum, 2014), em países Africanos, como Etiópia (Meseret; Ketema e Kassahun, 2020), Nigéria (Nkeiruka, Ebere & Obianime, 2012;Onyele & Anyanwu, 2018) e Argélia (Messaoudi & Begaa, 2018), em países Europeus, como Moldávia (Zinicovscaia et al, 2020) e Espanha (Martín-Domingo et al, 2017), em países do Oriente Médio, como Jordânia (Ababneh, 2017), Arábia Saudita (Ibrahim, 2014;Brima, 2017) e Irã (Zinsaz et al, 2015;Kohzadi et al, 2019) e em países da América do Sul, como o Brasil (Caldas & Machado, 2004;Leal et al, 2013;Silva, Francisconi & Gonçalves, 2016;Caldeirão et al, 2021;Souza et al, 2021;Tschinkel et al, 2020) e Peru (Zárate-Quiñones et al, 2021). Mas ainda há muito o que ser estudado (Zárate-Quiñones et al, 2021), considerando a importância dos oligoelementos para o metabolismo humano, bem como os riscos inerentes à saúde humana (Silva, Francisconi & Gonçalves, 2016).…”