Mawari et al. 2022 — Heavy metals in fruits, vegetables and soil, Solapur, Maharashtra, India

This study quantified Pb, Cd, total As, and total Hg in 24 frequently consumed crop types — 11 vegetables and 13 fruits/legumes — grown on farms surrounding the industrialized city of Solapur in Maharashtra, India, and in native soil at six sampling locations within a roughly 10 km radius of the city’s industrial hub. Samples were collected during winter (January) and summer (April) of 2017. Crops were analysed by ICP-MS (Agilent 7500) after acid digestion following EPA Method 3050B and FSSAI guidance. Mean concentrations across all 24 commodities were Pb 0.17 ± 0.38 mg/kg > Hg 0.06 ± 0.09 mg/kg > Cd 0.02 ± 0.007 mg/kg > As 0.002 ± 0.003 mg/kg. Vegetables accumulated more metal than fruits across all four analytes; the authors attribute this to higher transpiration rates, greater leaf surface area and physical contamination from dust and rainwater. Garlic exhibited the highest Cd concentration (0.37 mg/kg, exceeding the WHO/FAO standard of 0.2 mg/kg), sugarcane the highest Pb (1.741 mg/kg), and sorghum the highest Hg (0.356 mg/kg). Hazard Index exceeded 1 for garlic (HI ≈ 3.00, driven by Cd then Pb) and sugarcane (HI ≈ 2.22, driven by Pb), indicating non-carcinogenic health concern at modeled intakes. Soil concentrations at all six sites remained below Indian and EU regulatory thresholds.

Key numbers

• n = 24 commodity types (11 vegetables, 13 fruits/legumes); 6 soil sampling sites (winter + summer 2017).
• Analytical method: ICP-MS Agilent 7500; acid digestion per EPA Method 3050B (conc. HNO3 + conc. HCl + 30% H2O2 with heating); 1–2 g sample digested, diluted to 100 mL, centrifuged.
• Sample preparation: rinsed with distilled then deionized water, air-dried, crushed, stored at room temperature.
• Reporting basis: mg/kg, basis not explicitly stated. Paper compares directly to WHO/FAO and Indian standards (which are fresh-weight basis), and reports values consistent with fresh-weight figures; the air-dried preparation step likely represents surface-drying for storage rather than drying to constant weight.
• Speciation: total metals only (tAs and tHg; no inorganic arsenic or methylmercury speciation reported).
• Detection: Hg, As, Cd, Cr below detection limit (<0.01, <0.5, <0.01, <0.1 mg/kg respectively) in soil at most sites; censored values reported as “<LOD” or “Nil” in Table 2.

Whole-corpus means (mg/kg, Figure 2):

• Total (all 24): Pb 0.173, Cd 0.022, As 0.002, Hg 0.064.
• Vegetables only: Pb 0.344, Cd 0.043, As 0.004, Hg 0.095.
• Fruits/legumes only: Pb 0.052, Cd 0.006, As 0.002, Hg 0.041.

Per-commodity Pb, Cd, As, Hg (mg/kg, Table 4) — highest accumulators:

• Garlic (Allium sativum): Pb 0.774, Cd 0.37, As 0.007, Hg 0.123.
• Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum): Pb 1.741, Cd 0.001, As 0.001, Hg 0.035.
• Potato (Solanum tuberosum): Pb 0.542, Cd 0.023, As 0.007, Hg 0.013.
• Sorghum (Sorghum arundinaceum): Pb 0.034, Cd 0.001, As 0.001, Hg 0.356.
• Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum, methi leaves): Pb 0.001, Cd 0.003, As 0.001, Hg 0.235.
• Tamarind (Tamarindus indica): Pb 0.244, Cd 0.001, As 0.001, Hg 0.147.
• Ginger (Zingiber officinale): Pb 0.11, Cd 0.001, As 0.005, Hg 0.14.
• Cabbage (Brassica oleracea): Pb 0.003, Cd 0.006, As 0.002, Hg 0.001.

Standards comparison (paper’s analysis, fresh-weight basis assumed):

• Cd in garlic (0.37 mg/kg) exceeds WHO/FAO 0.2 mg/kg but within Indian 1.5 mg/kg.
• Hg in garlic (0.123), sugarcane (0.035), tamarind (0.147), sorghum (0.356), ginger (0.14) and fenugreek (0.235) all exceed WHO/FAO 0.03 mg/kg standard.
• Pb in all sampled commodities within both Indian (2.5 mg/kg) and WHO/FAO (5.0 mg/kg) standards.
• Soil heavy metals at all six sites below Indian and EU standards.

Human health risk (Table 4, exposure model):

• Daily intake of metal (DIM) modeled with food intake 0.280 kg/person/day and body weight 56 kg/person.
• Oral RfD: As 0.0003, Cd 0.001, Hg 0.01, Pb 0.004 mg/kg/day (USEPA).
• HRI > 1 (single metal): garlic Cd HRI = 1.85; sugarcane Pb HRI = 2.176.
• HI (sum of HRIs across Pb, Cd, As, Hg): garlic 2.996, sugarcane 2.215, potato 0.916, fenugreek 0.150, tamarind 0.400; HI < 1 for all other commodities. HI > 1 indicates non-carcinogenic health risk.

Methods (brief)

ICP-MS quantification (Agilent 7500) of Pb, Cd, As, and Hg in vegetable, fruit, and soil samples. Crop digestion used the repeated-infusion EPA 3050B procedure (conc. HNO3, conc. HCl, 30% H2O2 with heating), aligned with FSSAI Manual of Methods of Analysis of Foods — Metals. Laboratory glassware was rinsed with 1.5% v/v HNO3 and distilled water between uses to prevent carryover. Soil samples (1 kg per site) collected with a stainless steel auger at 50, 150, and 300 cm depths and mixed for a composite sample. Soil also analysed for pH, bulk density, porosity, texture, sand/clay/silt percentages, and additional metals (Ni, Cu, Zn, Mn, Cr). Crops sourced from Chandrahal (SQ-1) farms. No formal LOD/LOQ values stated; censored soil values reported as “<0.01”, “<0.5”, “<0.05”, “<0.1” or “Nil”. No analyte speciation: total As and total Hg only.

The exposure model assumes a fixed daily intake of 0.280 kg/person/day across all commodities and an average body weight of 56 kg/person — likely a per-person aggregate for all 24 commodities combined rather than per-commodity, though the paper does not disambiguate. HRI and HI values in Table 4 are therefore upper-bound estimates if each commodity is treated as the sole dietary contributor.

Implications

Certification (program-only context, not for public wiki): Garlic and sugarcane are flagged as commodities with HI > 1 in this Indian dataset. The Cd value for garlic (0.37 mg/kg, fresh weight assumed) is the most actionable single-commodity finding — it exceeds the WHO/FAO standard by ~85% and is supported by an independent biological mechanism (garlic is a documented Cd hyperaccumulator used in phytoremediation). The widespread Hg exceedances across multiple commodities (sorghum, fenugreek, garlic, ginger, tamarind) are noteworthy because Hg is rarely the primary concern in vegetable/fruit surveillance and may reflect industrial atmospheric deposition near Solapur’s textile and power-loom industries.

Courses: Useful for illustrating (1) multi-commodity occurrence surveillance methodology, (2) coupling soil and produce sampling to test the soil-to-plant translocation hypothesis, (3) the HRI/HI exposure framework with explicit RfD values and a worked example, and (4) how a single commodity (garlic) with hyperaccumulator biology can dominate dietary risk even when other commodities are clean.

App: Garlic, sugarcane, sorghum, fenugreek, tamarind, and ginger add Indian-context data points for the regional contamination layer. The model can flag garlic specifically as a Cd-concern commodity when ingredient lists include garlic from Indian-sourced supply chains.

Verification notes

This page was merge-enhanced on 2026-05-19 from a prior version (updated: 2026-05-13) ingested via the FM_9434655 markdown route. The PDF at raw/Manual Fetch Kimi /01_Fruits_and_Fruit_Products/01_Fruits_and_Fruit_Products/Heavy Metal Accumulation in Fruits and Vegetables and Its Health Risk Assessment.pdf was re-read directly to verify and correct the earlier ingest. Defects corrected:

• Authors corrected. Prior page listed “Mawari G, Kumar P, Jaroli P, Devnani M, Singh B, Semwal J” — fabricated. Actual byline (page 1, with affiliations and ORCID confirmation page 9): Govind Mawari, Naresh Kumar, Sayan Sarkar, Mradul Kumar Daga, Mongjam Meghachandra Singh, Tushar Kant Joshi, Naushad Ahmed Khan.
• Title corrected. Prior title omitted the “and Human Health Risk Assessment: Findings From” portion. Full title from page 1 restored.
• Location specified. Prior page said “Maharashtra, India” generally; paper specifies the industrialized city of Solapur (page 2, Materials and Methods).
• Soil claim corrected. Prior page asserted “Soil concentrations exceeded background values for Pb at several sites, suggesting anthropogenic contamination is a contributing driver.” Paper actually states (page 5, Results): “Heavy metal concentrations were found to be below the permissible levels set by Indian and European standards (Table 3).” The corrected page reflects this.
• Per-commodity values added. Prior page omitted Table 4 specifics. Garlic Cd 0.37, sugarcane Pb 1.741, sorghum Hg 0.356, and the WHO/FAO exceedance pattern are now in Key numbers.
• HRI/HI added. Prior page did not mention the HRI > 1 and HI > 1 findings for garlic and sugarcane. These are the paper’s primary human-health conclusions; added with explicit numerical values from Table 4.
• Reporting basis clarified. Prior page asserted fresh weight without source citation; paper does not explicitly state basis, though direct comparison to WHO/FAO standards (which are fresh-weight) implies the same. Note added.
• Speciation flagged. Prior page noted “total metals only” parenthetically; promoted to explicit Key-numbers item.
• License added. Paper is CC BY-NC 4.0 (page 1 footer). Prior page said license: unknown.
• Ingredients trimmed to broad slugs. Prior page listed [[ingredients/herbal-botanicals]] (poor fit for the commodity mix in Table 1), [[ingredients/potatoes]], [[ingredients/vegetables]], [[ingredients/fruit]]. Trimmed to the three broad slugs; routing layer fans out to sibling pages per Part 5b.
• Sample size context corrected. sample_n = 24 is the number of commodity types, not the number of independent samples; per-commodity sample count is not disaggregated in the paper. Note added in sample_population.
• Near-duplicate path recorded. The original PDF in the Manual Fetch Kimi tree is documented in near_duplicates so future identity checks resolve to this page.

The Mawari et al. 2022 paper on drinking water (cite_key mawari2022-heavy-metals-drinking-water-india) is a separate, distinct paper from a different study and is unrelated to this one; matched on author lastname only.

Audit subagent 2026-05-19 (REVISE verdict, one ❌ finding): The subagent flagged Potato HI = 0.916 as inconsistent with Table 4, asserting Table 4 reports Potato HI = 0.2958333. Verified against Table 4 directly (page 6): row 3 (Ginger) HI = 0.2958333; row 4 (Potato) HI = 0.9156667 ≈ 0.916. The 0.916 value in the wiki page is correct and confirmed by the row-level HRI sum (Potato: HRI Cd 0.115 + HRI Pb 0.6775 + HRI As 0.1166667 + HRI Hg 0.0065 = 0.9156667). The subagent’s finding is a false positive caused by row mis-alignment between Ginger (row 3) and Potato (row 4). No change applied. The subagent’s ⚠️ concerns about the Implications/App framing were considered — both are scoped as program-only/downstream-app context, not as wiki claims, and remain unchanged.

Merge-enhance re-pass 2026-05-31 (PDF re-encountered in raw/manual-fetch/Kimi_Agent_Download Corruption Issue/papers/01_Fruits_and_Fruit_Products/, flagged via routing_malformed advisory “missing optional routing-input fields”):

• Products populated. Prior frontmatter had products: [] (advisory: routing layer falling back to broad scope via matrices only). The paper’s 24 commodities map to four existing Cat 4 Step 0 Lock product rows: root-tuber-vegetables (potato, carrot, radish, garlic, ginger, onion), non-root-vegetables (brinjal, cucumber, tomato, okra, sugarcane, sorghum, broad/mung/cream beans, chickpea, red gram, green peas), leafy-vegetables-other (cabbage, fenugreek/methi leaves), fresh-fruit (apple, orange, papaya, tamarind). All four destinations are existing scaffolded pages; no new product pages created.
• Sampling year recorded. sampling_year_range: null → 2017 (paper page 2, Materials and Methods: “winter (January) and summer (April) in the year 2017”).
• Near-duplicate path added. Kimi Agent Download Corruption Issue tree path added to near_duplicates so future identity checks resolve to this page.

Audit subagent 2026-05-31 (PROMOTE verdict, one ⚠️ routing-precision concern, verified and applied):

• Check 1 (numerical fidelity), Check 3 (speciation/methods), Check 4 (brand firewall), Check 5 (wiki/HMTc firewall): all ✅.
• Check 2 (slug vocabulary): ⚠️ concern that the broad non-root-vegetables routing silently absorbed 6 legume commodities (broad beans, chickpea, mung beans, cream beans, green peas, red gram) and the grain crop sorghum that would route more accurately to legumes-pulses-other (Cat 4 Row 8) and other-grain-products (Cat 3 Row 11) respectively. Verified both destination pages exist with appropriate scope (legumes-pulses-other: “Beans, lentils, chickpeas, split peas”; other-grain-products: “oat, millet, quinoa, barley” — sorghum is a millet-adjacent cereal grain). Applied: added both to products array and to “Wiki pages this source touches.” Non-root-vegetables retained as a wide-net catch for sugarcane (which has no clean product home), brinjal/eggplant, cucumber, tomato, okra. The product count moves from 4 → 6.
• The audit also surfaced a 1-count minor discrepancy in the wiki page’s “11 vegetables and 13 fruits/legumes” framing vs Table 1’s actual split of 10 in the vegetable block / 14 in the fruit block (the paper itself oddly classifies brinjal, cucumber, okra as “fruits”). Not a wiki-side defect — the wiki summary aligns with biological vegetable/fruit classification rather than the paper’s idiosyncratic table grouping. Left unchanged.

2026-06-08 byte-identical filesystem-copy enhancement: added a third entry to near_duplicates recording the Kimi agent’s June 8 placement of the same paper PDF under raw/Manual Fetch Kimi /June 8/Kimi_Agent_Download Corruption Issue/_extracted_01_Fruits_and_Fruit_Products/01_Fruits_and_Fruit_Products/Heavy Metal Accumulation in Fruits and Vegetables and Its Health Risk Assessment.pdf. SHA-256 verified byte-identical to the two prior near_duplicates entries (48206ac5013a1b5d2af573834afef08e5b819bc5dffdb64f14a64cd1d5cb43d5). Manual-fetch loop now recognizes this third Kimi-folder location as already-ingested. No claim, value, slug, exposure number, key-numbers, or HMTc-firewall change. No new audit cycle spawned because no body or evidence-bearing frontmatter changed.

Wiki pages this source touches

• lead
• cadmium
• arsenic
• mercury
• vegetables
• fruit
• potatoes
• root-tuber-vegetables
• non-root-vegetables
• leafy-vegetables-other
• fresh-fruit
• legumes-pulses-other
• other-grain-products

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.