Overview
Nieder and Benbi provide a comprehensive narrative review of five potentially toxic elements (PTEs) — arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb) — covering their sources, biogeochemical cycling, pathways into food and water, and human health consequences. The review synthesizes global literature on concentration ranges in soil, water, and food, covers exposure routes including dietary intake, and discusses toxicological mechanisms and dose-response data for each metal. It serves as a broad reference synthesizing the primary literature on all five metals within a single framework, making it useful as a contextual anchor for regulatory limit comparisons and multi-metal exposure assessments.
Key numbers
- Review scope: As, Cd, Cr, Hg, and Pb across soil, water, food, and human exposure matrices
- Dietary exposure pathways covered for all five metals
- Regulatory limit comparisons across multiple jurisdictions included
- Toxicological reference values (TDI, PTWI, BMDL) discussed for each metal
- Geographic variation in environmental concentrations reviewed
- No primary measurement data from the authors; all values synthesized from cited literature
Methods (brief)
Narrative systematic review. Literature searched across PubMed and Web of Science. Covers environmental occurrence, bioavailability, food-chain transfer, toxicology, and regulatory standards for As, Cd, Cr, Hg, and Pb. Open access, CC BY. No primary laboratory work.
Implications
Certification: Useful as a secondary reference for contextualizing concentration ranges and regulatory limits for the five covered metals. Cannot substitute for primary occurrence studies in HMT&C threshold-setting but provides a defensible literature anchor. Note: the review does not distinguish iAs from tAs or tHg from MeHg in all sections; downstream use must verify speciation when citing specific concentration or toxicology values from this source.
Courses: Well-suited as a reading assignment for an introductory module covering all five PTEs; the multi-metal integrated structure reduces the need for five separate background readings.
App: Does not provide primary concentration data usable for contamination_profile updates; contributes to literature context and can be cited for toxicological reference values if primary studies are unavailable for a specific cell.
Wiki pages updated on ingest
Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and 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 | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| e317189 | 2026-08-11 | correction | 6 sections added; narrative text revised |