Concentration of Cadmium, Lead and Chrome in Some Vegetables Amended with Phosphate and Urea Fertilizers for More Than Forty Years

Mansour Salem, A.^1* & Abdulla Noralldien, I.²

¹Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Sebha University, Libya
²Faculty of Agriculture, Sebha University, Libya

Mansour Salem, A., Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Sebha University, Libya.

Keywords: Heavy Metals; Soil; Vegetables; Contamination; Fertilize; Correlation

Abstract

Ashati agriculture project built in 1975 for the production of vegetables and grasses for animals. Since that time vegetables were grown and fertilized by phosphate and urea chemical fertilizers. therefore this investigation was conducted to study the state of the accumulation of some heavy metals such as Cd, Pb and Cr. in some selected vegetables which include Solanum tuberosum (Potatoes), Allium cepa L. (Onion), Daucus Corota L. (Carrot), Cucurbita Pepo (Courgette), Solanum melongena L. (Eggplant), Lactuca sativa L. (Lettuce), Petroselinum crispum (mill.) Nym. (Parsley) and Spinacea oleracea (Spinach). The mean levels of these heavy metals were ranged from 0.0-0.03, 0.0-2.36 and 0.0.0-8.13. ppm for Pb, Cd and Cr. respectively. Soil samples were also collected from the same sites of collected vegetables, concentration of these metals in the soil were 0.38, 0.87 and 1.75 ppm respectively. Among the vegetables studied Cd and Cr exceeded the allowable limits in some vegetables whereas concentration of Pb is under the detectable limit. The results also shows phosphate fertilizer contains 1.15 and 3.3 ppm of Cd and Cr respectively, while Urea contains 0.14 ppm of Cr as impurities. Concentration factor of Cd (1.21 - 7.38) and Cr (1.22 - 6.84) had exceeded 1.0 which indicate that concentration of these elements are much higher in vegetables samples than in soil. Statistical analysis shows there is a positive correlation between Cd and Cr at 0.01, and also between Cd and Cr, Cd and Pb at 0.05 level, positive correlation at 0.01 level were also observed between cultivated and uncultivated soil, urea and cultivated and uncultivated, while these is negative correlation between phosphate fertilizer and cultivated soil, phosphate and urea.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).