A Atamaleki, N Naimi, Y Fakhri, H Sharifi Maleksari, H Nosrati, S Fallah,
Volume 12, Issue 4 (2-2020)
Abstract
Background and Objective: Nowadays, water shortage crisis leads to wastewater reuse in agriculture sector. The presence of pollutants such as heavy metal in wastewater results in the accumulation of them in vegetables, and it will finally be transferred to consumers and will have irreversible effects on their health. Therefore, the present study was performed to do a systematic review along with meta-analysis on heavy metal accumulation in mint plant that is irrigated with wastewater.
Materials and Methods: Related articles were collected from databases like SID, Magiran, Iranmedex, IranDoc, Embase, Medline, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google scholar between 1982 and 2019 and the required data were extracted. Then, due to the heterogeneity of studies entered in the research, a random effect model was applied to analyze them using STATA 14 software. Non-carcinogenic risk was assessed for children and adults.
Results: According to the search results, 1693 articles were entered in the review process until the beginning of 2019 and finally only 12 articles were included in the research. According to the results of the meta-analysis, the order of the metals based on concentration (mg/kg) were: Zn > Ni > Cr > Cu > Pb > Cd. Also, based on the non-carcinogenic risk assessment results, mint consumption showed a significant health effects on children age group compared to adults, especially in India and Pakistan.
Conclusion: wastewater reuse in agriculture sector leads to increase concentration of metals in vegetables like mint. This increased the risk of non-carcinogenicity in the age groups, especially children. Therefore, it is recommended that continuous monitoring of irrigation sources, soils, and vegetables is done to prevent the transmission of these pollutants to the human food cycle.
Mohsen Mohammadi Galangash, Rezvan Ghasemi Zolpirani, Mohammad Naimi Joubani,
Volume 13, Issue 3 (11-2020)
Abstract
Background and Objective: Contamination of roadside soils with heavy metals is a serious threat to soil ecosystems and organisms and human health. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the concentration of heavy metals in the roadside soils of the Rasht-Qazvin old road.
Materials and Methods: 10 out-of-town sampling sites were selected via the field observation of the entire area. surface soil sampling with three replicates was performed around the Rasht-Qazvin old road. Heavy metals concentrations were measured using ICP-OES following samples preparation and acid digestion. The pollution level of heavy metals was assessed using geoaccumulation index (Igeo) and potential ecological risk index (PERI).
Results: The results showed that the average concentrations of Zn, Cu, Ni and Pb in the roadside soils were 58.07, 19.96, 20.26 and 23.21 mg/kg, respectively. The findings showed that concentration of Zn and Ni were higher than background values and the amount of Zn exceeded WHO standard limit. The potential ecological risk index (PERI) with an average value of 86.24, indicated low level of pollution for all of the studied metals. The results of geoaccumulation index (Igeo) revealed moderately contamination level of Ni.
Conclusion: Old roads are generally known as one of the sources of pollution for the surrounding lands. Although the concentration of pollutants around the road is expected to be very high, we did not detect elevated levels of heavy metals. This fact can be explained by the current road repairs and widening, agricultural activities on marginal lands and wind blows in mountainous regions which leads to the dispersion of the soil pollutants.