Study of Heavy Metal Poisoning in Frequent Users of Chinese Medicines in Hong Kong and Macau

Abstract

This study is a direct assessment of blood heavy metal concentrations of frequent users of Chinese medicines (CM), who had been taking prescribed CM at least 6 days per week for not less than 3 months, to determine whether their intake of CM could cause an increased load of toxic heavy metals in the body. From November 2009 to June 2010, 85 subjects were recruited with informed consent, and their blood samples were collected for measurement of arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury concentrations. Results showed that blood concentrations of four heavy metals of nearly all 85 subjects were within reference ranges. Only one subject who had consumed plentiful seafood was found to have transiently increased blood arsenic concentration (29% higher than the upper limit of the reference range). However, after refraining from eating seafood for 1 month, his blood arsenic concentration returned to normal. Eighty commonly prescribed CM in both raw medicine and powder concentrate supplied by local distributors were also tested for the four heavy metals. Twelve out of the 80 raw medicines were found to contain one or more of the heavy metals that exceeded the respective maximum permitted content. Cadmium was most frequently found in the contaminated samples. None of the powder concentrates had heavy metal content exceeding their respective maximum permitted level.

Estimation of bioaccessibility and potential human health risk of mercury in Chinese patent medicines

“…Human health risk associated with exposure to mercury by taking CPMs has been evaluated in several previous studies by estimating the total amount of Hg ingested (Chui et al, 2013;Liu et al, 2012). However, only the bioavailable portion of Hg can be absorbed by humans and transported into the blood stream, freely cross cellular membranes and redistribute around the body.…”

Nutraceuticals and Their Potential to Treat Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: Separating the Credible from the Conjecture

“…Many of the imported supplements could be contaminated with pesticides that are not legal in Western countries [106,107], or be contaminated with heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and thallium [108,109]. Regular users of Chinese herbal medicines may have an increased risk of developing cancers/diseases of the kidneys and other organs of the urinary tract [110,111] and heavy metal poisoning [107,108,109,112,113]. Many reports suggest that Western countries such as the USA, Australia and the United Kingdom should improve quality standards and policies regarding the sale of supplements, especially those from non-Western countries.…”

Role of Analytical Techniques in the Standardization of A Dermoprotective Polyherbal Formulation – Dermoshine

“…Copyright: toxicity. Their presence will cause toxic effect in the body and also causes some genetic variations [19]. Therefore, the formulation was checked for the presence of heavy metal contents namely Pb, Cd, As and Hg and the results were shown in Table 5.…”