Non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health risk assessment of heavy metals in cooked beans and vegetables in Punjab, North India

Overview

Kharkwal and colleagues measured arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury in cooked beans and cooked vegetable preparations collected from household diets in Ludhiana and Bathinda districts of Punjab, India. The study reports mg/kg mean concentrations by district and urban/rural household stratum, alongside chronic daily intake and risk calculations for adults and elderly subjects. The arsenic and mercury measurements are total/unspecified species; the paper does not report inorganic arsenic or methylmercury speciation.

Key numbers

The sampling frame included 150 households from 30 locations: Ludhiana urban 65 households, Ludhiana rural 30, Bathinda urban 35, and Bathinda rural 20. The dietary survey covered 501 subjects. Mean daily consumption of beans and vegetables was 35.09 g and 215.93 g in Ludhiana, and 26.85 g and 230.54 g in Bathinda.

Table 3 reports heavy metal content as mean +- SD in mg/kg for cooked beans and cooked vegetable preparations. ND is the source’s non-detect notation.

Table 1 reports ICP-MS method validation values in μg/kg: arsenic (As) recovery 99.7%, LOD 0.009, LOQ 0.133; lead (Pb) recovery 98.5%, LOD 0.045, LOQ 0.170; cadmium (Cd) recovery 97.7%, LOD 0.006, LOQ 0.110; mercury (Hg) recovery 99.3%, LOD 0.013, LOQ 0.246. The standard calibration range was 10-500 μg/kg for each of As, Pb, Cd, and Hg.

Selected CDI values reported in the abstract and Table 4 include arsenic from cooked beans in urban adult males of Ludhiana at 7.74 x 10^-9 mg/kg/day and Bathinda at 5.31 x 10^-9 mg/kg/day, arsenic from cooked vegetable preparations in urban adult males of Ludhiana at 5.62 x 10^-8 mg/kg/day and Bathinda at 1.32 x 10^-8 mg/kg/day, and cadmium from cooked vegetable preparations in urban adult females of Ludhiana at 3.76 x 10^-7 mg/kg/day.

Methods (brief)

The study selected urban and rural households from Ludhiana and Bathinda districts, collected cooked beans and cooked vegetable preparations from each selected household, dried the cooked foods at 60°C to constant weight, ground them, and analyzed powdered samples. For metal analysis, a 50 mg powdered food sample was microwave digested in 10 mL concentrated ICP-MS grade nitric acid, diluted to a final volume of 50 mL, and analyzed by ICP-MS (7700x, Agilent Technologies) with an autosampler; individual samples were run in triplicate and the mean was used for analysis. The paper reports total/unspecified arsenic and mercury only, with no inorganic arsenic, methylmercury, or mercury species separation.

Implications

This source provides cooked-food occurrence evidence for household-prepared legumes and vegetable preparations in north India, rather than raw commodity measurements. That cooked-versus-raw distinction should be kept when reading the values for legumes, leafy vegetables, non-root vegetables, root vegetables, and dietary intake. Because the source measured total/unspecified arsenic and total/unspecified mercury, its arsenic and mercury values support total-species context only.

Update history

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