Comparative health risk surveillance of heavy metals via dietary foodstuff consumption in different land-use types of Pakistan

This study probes heavy metals (HMs) concentration in groundwater, soil, vegetables, chicken eggs, and buffalo milk samples collected from different land-use types (LUT) with special emphasis on human health risk via their consumption. Our results depicted that HMs (Ni, Cr, Pb, and Cd) concentration in groundwater of all LUT; Cd concentration in agricultural soil; Ni, Cr, Mn, Cd, and Pb concentration in buffalo milk; and Ni, Cd concentration in chicken eggs of all LUT surpassed the recommended permissible limits. While, on the other hand, Cr concentration in industrial and Pb concentration in agricultural LUT also exceeded permissible limits in the case of chicken egg samples. The concentration of Cr, Pb, and Cd in most of the vegetable samples of different LUT also crossed permissible limits. The accumulation factor for selected HMs followed trends for different LUT as Industrial > Agricultural > Residential, showing the transfer of risk from soil to vegetables. Our results for principle component analysis unravel that, unlike residential, industrial, and agricultural, LUT were highly affected from metals contaminations when different environmental matrices were studied. Health risk index (HRI) was chronicled >1 for Cd in groundwater of industrial and residential sites, in the eggs found in the industrial site, and for Pb in groundwater of industrial and agricultural sites due to higher daily intake of metal, while all other HMs revealed HRI < 1 in all LUT.