Pal et al. 2017 - Metals in wastewater-irrigated vegetables in Hisar

This study measured Cd, Pb, Cu, Zn, Cr, and Ni in edible vegetable parts from domestic-wastewater-irrigated farmlands around Hisar district, Haryana. It is routeable as high-exposure vegetable occurrence context, especially for carrots and leafy vegetables.

Key numbers

  • The abstract reports high matrix-specific values: spinach Cd 1.30 +/- 0.31 mg/kg, cabbage Pb 4.23 +/- 0.32 mg/kg, carrot Cu 1.42 +/- 0.25 mg/kg, cauliflower Zn 3.4 +/- 0.28 mg/kg, carrot Cr 1.16 +/- 0.11 mg/kg, and spinach Ni 2.45 +/- 0.86 mg/kg.
  • The discussion states that spinach had the highest Cd concentration, 1.30 mg/kg, and Ni concentration, 2.45 mg/kg.
  • Cabbage had the highest Pb concentration, 4.23 mg/kg.
  • Carrot had the highest Cu concentration, 1.42 mg/kg.
  • Radish had the highest Cr concentration, 1.16 mg/kg, while cauliflower had the highest Zn concentration, 4.26 mg/kg.
  • Transfer factors reported in the abstract were Cd 0.0306 in spinach, Pb 0.4448 in cabbage, Cu 0.2642 in spinach, Zn 0.2494 in cauliflower, Cr 0.0764 in carrot, and Ni 0.7469 in spinach.
  • The body text later reports Cu transfer factor highest in carrot at 0.2977; use body/table values over the abstract when extracting transfer-factor rows.

Methods

Vegetable samples were collected from farmlands irrigated with domestic wastewater around Hisar district. Edible parts were washed, oven-dried, powdered, acid-digested, and analyzed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Five samples of each vegetable were assayed and analyzed in triplicate.

Implications

The source supports vegetable gap filling for wastewater-irrigated produce in India. It should not be silently pooled with ordinary retail-market vegetables because the exposure setting is domestic wastewater irrigation.

Wiki pages this source may touch

Verification notes

The source reports values in mg/kg for vegetable tissues and separately reports transfer factors and risk-index calculations. The wiki page captures source-reported occurrence values and keeps the wastewater-irrigation context explicit. The abstract and discussion differ on the highest-Cr crop assignment: the abstract gives carrot, while the discussion gives radish at the same 1.16 mg/kg value.

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.

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ce3e07c2026-05-28activation | Vercel DATACITE env slots set, curators.md filled with founder entry + six scoped reviewer invitations, peer-review onboarding playbook drafted
51400b92026-05-28audit-queue: gasparik2017-wild-boar-slovakia-metals audited-revised