Heavy metals in some date palm fruit cultivars in Saudi Arabia and their health risk assessment

Abstract

Date fruits have ample amount of beneficial minerals but owing to diverse causes may contract with heavy metals and contaminants during field, processing, or transportation posing health challenges to consumers. Hence, current research explored the toxic heavy metals (Al, As, Cr, Pb, Cd, and Sb) levels in seven date varieties (Sakay Mabroum, Sakay Normal, Rashadya Al-qaseem, Barny Al-Madina, Eklas Al-Hassa, Safawy Al-Madina, Kadary) collected from different locations of Saudi Arabia by applying inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. Mean values of heavy metals were calculated and expressed. Most of the heavy metals with the exception of As, Pb, and Cd are within safe limit with respect to maximum allowable levels (MAL) in some date cultivars. Estimated daily intake (EDI) of heavy metals through dates consumption (100 gram/person/day) for As and Pb exceeded the Provisional maximum tolerable daily intake from some locations. Although Cd content was exceeding MAL; however, its EDI is well within safe limits of Provisional maximum tolerable daily intake. From EDI data, hazard risk index was also calculated, which predicted that both As and Pb can pose potential health hazards to dates consumers in Saudi Arabia. However, Pb contributed greater health risks due to date fruit consumption as compared to Arsenic.

Levels of heavy metals in ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) from selected districts of Central Gondar Zone, Ethiopia and associated health risk

“…The results indicated that, the order of EDI of all the investigated metals were Fe > Cu > Zn > Ni > Cd > Cr > Cu. EDIs values of these metals were lower than their corresponding maximum tolerable daily intake of Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Ni and Zn with values of 0.07, 0.2, 3.0, 0.8, 0.3, and 1, respectively (Woldetsadik et al, 2017;Alipour and Banagar 2018;Deng et al, 2019), which indicates that consuming ginger has negligible health risk (Salama et al, 2019).…”

Date Palm Fruit (Phoenix dactylifera): Effects on Vascular Health and Future Research Directions

“…While dates have positive biological effects, concerns have been raised about their potential concentrations of heavy metals [ 126 , 127 ]. Exposure to heavy metals can result in cardiovascular diseases, encephalopathy, renal dysfunction, dementia, and certain cancers [ 128 , 129 ].…”

“…Exposure to heavy metals can result in cardiovascular diseases, encephalopathy, renal dysfunction, dementia, and certain cancers [ 128 , 129 ]. A recent study of seven date varieties collected from different locations in Saudi Arabia noted that aluminum, chromium, and antimony were within a safe range based on the maximum allowable levels set by the World Health Organization, while arsenic, lead, and cadmium exceeded the upper limit in some of the date cultivars [ 126 ]. Numerous environmental factors can increase concentrations of heavy metals such as mining, fertilizer applications and industrial emissions, as well as naturally occurring amounts normally found in some soils [ 129 ].…”

Assessment of Lead, Zinc and Cadmium Contamination in the Fruit of Palestinian Date Palm Cultivars Growing at Jericho Governorate

“…The change in the level of cadmium that occurs between samples collected from the three studied sites may be due to the ability of plant absorption that depends on the content of heavy minerals in the soil and genetic makeup of the plant. Cadmium can result in diseases of kidney, lungs and also can lead to skeleton problems as it is related with cancerous risk as compared to lead which is non-cancer risk factor (Salama et al, 2019). Current study elucidated low level of Cd as compared to Pb revealing uptake of heavy metals owing to plant ability to accumulate them (Ahmed and Al-Swaidan.…”

“…Lead concentration may be attributed to various causes where automobile contribute to a greater extent followed by the use of lead-based pesticides in crop protection. The deposit of lead on edible tissues of crops also depends upon air pollution, air dust, distance from the roads side as well as traffic loads (Salama et al, 2019). Hussain et al analyzed dates imported into Kuwait and found that dates collected from different location were differing in Pb contents and some of the samples were exceeding the MAL values.…”