| Popis: |
Groundwater contaminated with arsenic is a significant environmental health concern worldwide because of the potential health risk due to ingestion of agricultural products produced to irrigate arsenic-contaminated water. Besides arsenic, heavy metals like Cr, Cd, Pb, Co, and Ni pollution in agricultural soil and foods worldwide has increased in short order. Metals are indefatigable environmental pollutants that cause adverse effects on human health and the main entrance of those toxic metals in the human body through drinking or consuming contaminated foods and water. In this research, we have determined arsenic and other metals concentration in soil and food samples associated with health risk with possible multivariate statistical approaches like principal component and cluster analysis to identify the probable origin. The outcome of soil pollution measurement indices like contamination factor, geo-accumulation index, and enrichment factor revealed that the soil sample is strongly contaminated by arsenic, which is considered an anthropogenic activity. Two rice grains (R-1, R-3) and drumstick (Sajna) exceed the Indian standard of arsenic concentration (As- 1.1 mg/kg) in food. Compared with WHO, all the samples exceeded the WHO limit except Red amaranth in Cu and Pb, Guava in Cr, Cd, and Pb, and Drumsticks in Cu and Cd for food samples. Arsenic and Cd show the highest transfer factor in the soil to food sample. The high value of bioaccumulation index and translocation coefficient indicate that metals absorb in plant tissue both from soil and supplied contaminated water. In the case of daily ingestion of metals, all highly toxic metals like As, Ni, and Pb represent high concentrations and exceed the daily ingestion limit (As- 3µg kg-1day-1, Ni- 1.3µg kg-1day-1, and Pb- 3.57 µg kg-1day-1) developed by FAO/WHO and EFSA. From the potential hazard quotient, values of As and Pb indicate that residents are at high health risk. The results of carcinogenic risk for harmful metals indicate that for rice grain, the values of As, Pb, and Cd are greater than 10 − 6, which suggest that the inhabitant of the investigated area are at very high carcinogenic risk according to USEPA. |
