DETERMINATION OF HEAVY METALS IN VEGETABLES PROCURED FROM OPEN MARKETS IN BENIN CITY

Abstract

Heavy metals are metallic elements whose density exceeds that of water, worldwide food chain's role in heavy metal ingestion has been widely investigated. This work aims to determine the heavy metal content of vegetables obtained from Uselu, Santana and Oba market in order to evaluate their quality before selling them on the open market. Every sample was obtained from public marketplaces in Benin City, specifically the Uselu, Santana, and Oba markets. Veggies with leaves, such as water, pumpkin, green, and shoko leaves. The plant samples were dried for three days and then powdered into a fine powder. Using recognized procedures, the digestive process was finished. The results of this study indicate that, although Cd was not detected in almost all of the samples, the values of Pb, Cd, Zn, Cr, and Fe in water leaves, shoko leaves, green leaves and pumpkin leaves, ranges from (0.010-0.75, 0.03-0.52, 0.003-0.60 & 0.003-0.64) mg/kg respectively. Market location and heavy metal concentrations in different vegetable species were correlated using variance analysis of the data, which revealed that the concentration differences are statistically not significant (p>0.05).