Levels, temporal trend and health risk assessment of five heavy metals in fresh vegetables marketed in Guangdong Province of China during 2014-2017

摘要

To systematically investigate the presence of toxic heavy metals and evaluate the potential health risks of heavy metals (HMs), the levels of cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), and chromium (Cr) in a total of 4401 representative samples of highly consumed fresh vegetables sampled from 21 prefecture-level cities of Guangdong Province, China, were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). In the analyzed vegetables, the heavy metal concentrations exceeded the maximum allowable concentrations (MACs) set by Chinese legislation were of 2.41% for Cd, 1.61% for Pb, 0.55% for As, and 0.48% for Cr. The concentrations of HMs indicated significant differences (p & 0.05) in vegetable groups and regions Cd, and Pb were the major contaminants in vegetables according to the results of principal component analysis During the four-year survey, a temporary rising trend was observed in As and Cr. The results from hierarchical cluster analysis also demonstrated that the status of HMs contaminations in vegetables from various regions displayed certain changes over time.