Barthwal et al. 2008 - medicinal-plant metals in Lucknow
Barthwal, Nair, and Kakkar measured Pb, Cd, Cr, and Ni in five medicinal-plant species and paired soils from three environmentally different sites in Lucknow, India. The paper is occurrence evidence for botanical raw material used in traditional medicine, with soil measurements as collection-site context. The exact plant values available in extracted text are limited because many results are plotted in figures rather than printed as tables.
Key numbers
All values below are preserved in the source unit, µg/g. The source reports plant and soil results in bar figures; this page only records values that are cleanly printed in the text.
| Medicinal plant matrix | Site/context | Pb | Cd | Cr | Ni |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abutilon indicum seeds | Three Lucknow sites | 0.5-1 µg/g in plants; paired soil 3-4 µg/g | lowest in both soil and plant from HTA; exact plant value not printed in text | text reports Cr ranged 0.1-1.21 µg/g, but extracted text does not cleanly separate plant vs soil | text reports Ni ranged 0.45-1.7 µg/g, but extracted text does not cleanly separate plant vs soil |
| Calotropis procera root | HTA | 2 µg/g in root; paired soil 4.8 µg/g | 0.25 µg/g in root; paired soil 1.15 µg/g | highest in RA soil and plant sample; exact value not printed in text | highest in HTA soil; exact plant value not printed in text |
| Calotropis procera root | RA | not reported in extracted text | no Cd detected in root samples | not reported in extracted text | not reported in extracted text |
| Euphorbia hirta whole plant | Three Lucknow sites | 1-1.9 µg/g in whole plant | 0.12 µg/g in RA plant; paired RA soil 0.17 µg/g | lowest in IA soil and plant; exact value not printed in text | lowest in IA soil and plant; exact value not printed in text |
| Peristrophe bycaliculata whole plant | Three Lucknow sites | 0.38-1.25 µg/g in whole plant; paired soils 2.5-3.0 µg/g | HTA 0.28 µg/g; RA 0.07 µg/g; IA 0.06 µg/g | lowest in IA sample; exact value not printed in text | lowest in IA sample; exact value not printed in text |
| Tinospora cordifolia stems | Three Lucknow sites | lower than 2.5 µg/g in both soil and plant samples | below WHO permissible limit in all three samples; exact values not printed in text | no significant difference among three sites; exact values not printed in text | no significant difference among three sites; exact values not printed in text |
The discussion states that the highest Pb content among plant samples was in Calotropis procera root from the heavy-traffic site at 2 µg/g, with paired soil Pb of 4.8 µg/g. The same sample had Cd of 0.25 µg/g, with paired soil Cd of 1.15 µg/g. The authors state that Pb and Cd detected in the study were below the WHO permissible limits they cite for medicinal plants, and they print those limits as Pb 10 µg/g and Cd 0.3 µg/g.
The Methods section reports instrumental detection limits of Cr 0.006 µg/g, Ni 0.010 µg/g, Pb 0.042 µg/g, and Cd 0.0025 µg/g. All samples were analyzed in triplicate and plotted as mean values with standard deviation bars in the figures.
Methods (brief)
Experts from the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow identified the five medicinal-plant species. Plant parts were chosen according to therapeutic use: Abutilon indicum seeds, Calotropis procera root, Euphorbia hirta whole plant, Peristrophe bycaliculata whole plant, and Tinospora cordifolia stems. Samples and paired soils were collected from a heavy traffic area, a residential area, and an industrial area in Lucknow. One-gram powdered plant or soil portions were wet-digested with concentrated nitric acid and perchloric acid in a 6:1 ratio, made to 10 mL with 0.1 N HNO3, and analyzed by inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry. The source reports total elemental Pb, Cd, Cr, and Ni; no Cr-VI speciation is reported.
Implications
The paper supports botanical raw-material occurrence context for medicinal plants harvested in urban and industrial environments. Soil values should remain collection-site context, while plant-part values can inform herbal-botanical contamination profiles. Because the source prints many values only in figures, downstream extraction should not invent full sample-level tables from bar heights.
Wiki pages this source may touch
Verification notes
- Identity checks before writing found no existing source page for DOI
10.1016/S0895-3988(08)60049-5, raw handleMFK_barthwal2008, or cite keybarthwal2008-medicinal-plants-heavy-metals-lucknow. - DOI/access check: the DOI was not printed in the extracted PDF text, but PubMed lists PMID
18837296with DOI10.1016/S0895-3988(08)60049-5. - All Key numbers were checked against
/tmp/hmi-june9-080.txtextracted withpdftotext -layout. Figure-only values that were not printed in text are reported as “exact value not printed in text.” - Units are preserved as
µg/g; no conversion to mg/kg or ppb was performed. - Speciation check: Cr is total chromium by ICP emission spectrometry. The page does not claim Cr-VI.
- Soil values are included only as paired collection-site context and should not be pooled as plant/product occurrence.
- Brand firewall: no commercial brands or producers are reported.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 4039d20 | 2026-06-10 | scope: broaden ingest to the full upstream+downstream literature (marine, atmospheric, attribution, exposure, toxicology) — inclusion is the default |