Monitoring and risk assessment due to presence of heavy metals and pesticides in tea samples

Abstract

Tea is one of the most consumed beverages after water, but unfortunately the application of pesticides and heavy metals in crops make it unsafe for use. This research was conducted to evaluate the risk of heavy metals and pesticides in samples of natural source tea (gardens) and different local market brands. High Performance Liquid Chromatography was used to detect pesticides, Bifenthrin, Lambda chalothrin, Omadachloroprid, Dichlorovas, Glyphosate and Emamectin. Heavy metals such as Zinc, Oron, Chromium, copper, manganese and cobalt were determined by atomic absorption spectroscopy. The value of HRO and THQ was still calculated for some exceeded samples. From results obtained some of the tea samples were contaminated from with heavy metals i.e., cobalt and manganese and pesticides as: dichlorovas, imacloroprid, bifenthrin, emamectin, glyphosate, difenaconazole and lambda above the allowed limits. The assessments revealed the potential for potential health risk for the consumers. The results of the study suggested that risk assessment and monitoring should be done at source that is at the production and processing area so that toxic effects are not passed on to the consumers or to the environment.Keywords: high performance liquid chromatography; health risk index; target hazard quotient. Practical Application:The tea is consumed on a large scale throughput the world and becomes mandatory to carry out the monitoring and evaluation of the risk to the health of the consumers. This research was conducted and provides an easy and convenient approach to determine the concentration of heavy metals and pesticides associated with health in samples of tea harvested from natural sources (gardens) and local market brands. The methods employed are easily adoptable, reliable and repeatable for future studies.

Dietary risk assessment of fluoride, lead, chromium, and cadmium through consumption of Tieguanyin tea and white tea

“…At present, the consumers are concerned about the chemical contaminants in food and beverages due to their potential toxicity to humans (Lv et al, 2013;Jiang et al, 2019). This issue has also received more attention concerning tea as the use of agro chemicals has increased over the past decades (Karak & Bhagat, 2010;Pehrsson et al, 2011;Yaqub et al, 2018). Fluoride, one of the most chemically active elements occurring in nature, exhibits both beneficial and toxic effects on human health (Janiszewska & Balcerzak, 2013;Chan et al, 2013).…”

Determination of Concentration of Heavy Metals in Fruits, Vegetables, Groundwater, and Soil Samples of the Cement Industry and Nearby Communities and Assessment of Associated Health Risks

“…For digestion of metals, 30% of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) and 50% of nitric acid solution were prepared. H 2 O 2 solution was labeled as solution A and the nitric acid solution was labeled as solution B [14].…”

Heavy Metal Contamination of Medicinal Plants and Potential Implications on Human Health

“…There are studies showing the presence of heavy metals in tea samples made by medicinal plants. For example, Ghazala et al [90] showed that following a sample collected from a source with a concentration of 5,804 ppm, he obtained THQ (target risk quotient) over 1, demonstrating that tea consumption can present a risk to human health due to the exceeded concentration of toxic heavy metals. Another study by Diaconu et al [88] showed that in the tea sample the highest level of heavy metal was iron, between 16.88 ± 0.87 mg / L in Urtica dioica L. A study by Mahmoud et al [91] show that a certain brand of black tea contains the digested samples with the highest amounts of Mn (1128.5 ± 77.9 µg/g) Fe (269.0 ± 14.1 µg / g) and Zn (29 , 6 ± 2.0 µg / g) and in the infused samples Mn (206.1 ± 8.1 µg / 100 ml), Fe (3.0 ± 1.16 µg / 100 ml) and Zn (6.2 ± 1.0 µg / 100 mL), which means in the infused samples the quantities of metals are much smaller.…”