Human health risk assessment of toxic elements in fish species collected from the river Buriganga, Bangladesh

Abstract

Multielement (48) analysis was carried out of various fish species collected from river Buriganga, the most polluted river in Bangladesh to assess human health risk by toxic elements. Sixteen elements that is, Be, V, Cr, Mn, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Se, Mo, Cd, Ba, Hg, Pb, Bi, and U, were taken into account due to their toxicities on human health. Results show that concentrations of elements in various fish species were higher in winter than those in monsoon. Among 16 elements, Mn, Cu, Zn, Cd, Ba, Pb were above Food Safety Guideline in some fishes in winter. THQ and TTHQ/HI values were less than 1 for all fishes in monsoon while THQ and TTHW/HI values were more than 1 for most of fishes in winter. These results suggesting non-carcinogenic health hazard through consumption of contaminated fishes. Only As showed low cancer risk while no cancer risk was observed for other toxic elements in monsoon. In winter, Pb showed only moderate cancer risk for Mystus vittatus (site-7) while for other fishes low cancer risk was found by Pb. It can therefore be concluded that there is human health risk in consuming of fishes collected from river Buriganga especially in winter.

Keywords:

• Toxic elements
• Human health
• Target hazard quotient (THQ)
• Hazard index (HI)
• Buriganga river Bangladesh

Acknowledgment

Authors would like to thank Mr. Md Shafiqul Islam Sarkar, Central Chemical Laboratory, Rapid Action Battalion, Uttara, Dhaka 1230, Bangladesh, for his help for multielement analysis by using ICP-MS. The authors are also thankful to Xuehong Zheng, Ding Chen and Chunhui Wang (Xiamen University) for their technical support.

Additional information

Funding

This research was mainly supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 20720180125), the National Natural Science Fund (No.41576180) and the National Social Science Fund of China (No. 17VHQ012).