Emmanuel 2025 - Heavy metals in urban-grown vegetables from Kano State, Nigeria
Emmanuel measured Cd, Ni, Pb, Mn, and total Cr in vegetables grown around Wudil, Nomans-Land, and Sharada in Kano State, Nigeria. Table 1 gives crop-by-site concentrations for pepper, lettuce, carrot, onion, beetroot, and spinach. Cadmium is the clearest occurrence concern in the table, reaching 0.36 mg/kg in Wudil carrot, while chromium reaches 0.42 mg/kg in Nomans-Land spinach and 0.41 mg/kg in Sharada onion.
Key numbers
All concentrations are source-reported mg/kg in the edible vegetable matrix.
| Site | Vegetable | Cd | Ni | Pb | Mn | Cr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wudil | Pepper | 0.19 | 0.04 | 0.06 | 4.87 | 0.13 |
| Wudil | Lettuce | 0.27 | 0.06 | 0.02 | 9.28 | 0.10 |
| Wudil | Carrot | 0.36 | 0.03 | 0.12 | 0.97 | 0.12 |
| Wudil | Onion | 0.33 | 0.02 | 0.08 | 0.67 | 0.14 |
| Nomans-Land | Beetroot | 0.22 | 0.03 | 0.10 | 0.78 | 0.10 |
| Nomans-Land | Pepper | 0.25 | 0.03 | 0.10 | 0.79 | 0.10 |
| Nomans-Land | Spinach | 0.31 | 0.03 | 0.13 | 1.72 | 0.42 |
| Sharada | Onion | 0.23 | -0.01 | 0.15 | 0.82 | 0.41 |
| Sharada | Lettuce | 0.28 | -0.01 | 0.15 | 0.82 | 0.40 |
Table 2 reports an overall vegetable mean +/- SD of Cd 0.21 +/- 0.02 mg/kg, Ni 0.02 +/- 0.03 mg/kg, Pb 0.10 +/- 0.05 mg/kg, Mn 2.16 +/- 2.4 mg/kg, and Cr 0.21 +/- 0.17 mg/kg. The corresponding soil mean +/- SD values were Cd 0.29 +/- 0.70 mg/kg, Ni -0.15 +/- 0.04 mg/kg, Pb 1.41 +/- 1.58 mg/kg, Mn 6.12 +/- 4.001 mg/kg, and Cr 0.57 +/- 0.30 mg/kg.
The source also calculates estimated daily intake. Examples include Wudil carrot Cd 2.07E-03, Wudil lettuce Mn 5.33E-02, Sharada onion Cr 2.31E-03, and Nomans-Land spinach Cr 2.42E-03 in the paper’s EDI units.
Methods (brief)
Samples were collected during the January-March 2025 dry season from Wudil, Nomans-Land, and Sharada, representing peri-urban, residential, and industrial urban-agriculture settings. The study reports 64 total samples from eight sites, including soil and edible vegetable portions. Vegetable samples were prepared from edible tissue, digested using microwave-assisted acid digestion, and analyzed by microwave plasma atomic emission spectroscopy. Statistical comparisons used ANOVA and Pearson correlation.
Implications
- Certification: Adds Nigeria-market occurrence data for Cd, Pb, total Cr, Ni, and Mn across several raw vegetable matrices. This is not a US-market benchmark pool source unless a cross-market rationale is documented.
- Courses: Useful for showing how urban agriculture, soil contamination, and crop type create different heavy-metal patterns across vegetables.
- App: Supports both crop-specific pages and broad vegetable category pages with table-level occurrence values.
Wiki pages this source may touch
- green-bell-pepper
- lettuce
- carrot
- spinach
- onions
- beet
- leafy-vegetables
- root-vegetables
- non-root-vegetables
- vegetables-mixed
- non-root-vegetables
- root-tuber-vegetables
- leafy-vegetables-other
- spinach
- cadmium
- lead
- nickel
- chromium
- manganese
Verification notes
- Chromium is total Cr, not Cr(VI).
- The source table records negative Ni values for Sharada onion and lettuce. These are preserved as source-reported analytical outputs and should not be interpreted as true negative concentrations.
- The abstract states that Sharada had Pb of 0.82 mg/kg, but Table 1 reports Pb 0.15 mg/kg and Mn 0.82 mg/kg for Sharada onion and lettuce. This page follows Table 1 and records the abstract/table discrepancy.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| c1aef38 | 2026-06-02 | audit-queue: hamid2021-bacterial-plant-biostimulants-review → audited-promote |