Heavy Metals Contaminating Vegetables in Nigerian Markets, Sources and Health Implications: A Search Perspective View

ABSTRACT

Vegetables are common fresh foods available in any ordinary Nigerian market both in the cities, towns and villages and are widely consumed by all. The growing human activities put the quality of these vegetables in doubt especially from Heavy Metals (HMs) contamination with potential toxicity of these HMs in humans from ingestion of vegetables. This perspective view paper looked at HMs contamination of soils and vegetables consumed by Nigerians. Literature search was carried out on HMs contamination of soils and vegetables on electronic data bases of scientific articles such as google scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Elsevier and SciElo. Data obtained was analysed qualitatively by taking note of new information captured in each article. There was heavy contamination of soils, and vegetables sold across the Nigerian markets and the HMs found to contaminate vegetables were: arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), magnesium (Mg), molybdenum (Mo), nickel (Ni), selenium (Se), and zinc (Zn). Most of the contaminations were from anthropogenic sources and HMs accumulation and toxicity in humans could cause several diseases such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, rheumathoid arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, and several cancers among others. There should be a regular screening of farm lands and vegetables from risk prone farm lands to detect early HMs toxicity for prompt interventions.