Heavy metals in vegetables and the health risk to population in Zhejiang, China

There are increasing concerns on heavy metal contaminant in vegetables. We analyzed 343 vegetables from Zhejiang province, China for the concentrations of As, Cd, Hg and Pb, and evaluated the health risk to local residents by calculating health hazard index (HI). The mean levels of As, Cd, Hg and Pb were 0.009, 0.015, 0.003 and 0.022 mg/kg, respectively. The samples with 4.37% (Cd), 2.62% (Hg) and 3.79% (Pb) were exceeding the maximum allowable concentrations (MACs) set by Chinese legislation. The mean and 97.5 percentile levels of heavy metals were used to present the mean and high exposure assessment. At the mean exposure level, all HIs were less than the threshold of 1. The HIs of Hg and Cd at high exposure were 1.01 and 1.85. It indicates that for the general people there is low health risk to As, Cd, Hg and Pb by the vegetable intake. Furthermore, considerable attentions should be paid for the possible pollution of heavy metals in vegetables, especially for Cd.