Concentrations of plant mineral nutrients and potentially toxic elements in some medicinal plants in the Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Lamiaceae families from Southern Türkiye: insights into health implications

Abstract

Medicinal plants have been used throughout history in the treatment of many diseases in traditional Anatolian folk medicine as well as all over the world. The rapid increase in agricultural and industrial activities due to the increasing population around the world causes air, water and soil pollution, and accumulation of potentially toxic elements in medicinal plants. In this study, plant mineral nutrients and potentially toxic elements analyzes were carried out in 38 plant species belonging to the medicinally important families Asteraceae, Fabaceae and Lamiaceae. The percentage of macroelements (in %) varies between 0.20 and 1.46 for calcium, 0.08 and 1.35 for potassium, 0.04 and 0.24 for magnesium, 0.01 and 0.34 for sodium, while concentrations of microelements and potentially toxic elements (in mg kg⁻¹) vary between 3.21 and 721.28 for aluminum, 41.33 and 231.01 for boron, 0.01 and 0.61 for cadmium, 1.09 and 47.79 for chromium, 12.90 and 43.13 for copper, 17.75 and 1109.39 for iron, 51.50 and 715.48 for manganese, 0.12 and 9.42 for nickel, 1.58 and 22.11 for lead and finally 80.82 and 260.08 for zinc. In addition, estimated daily intake (EDI), target hazard quotient (THQ), and hazard index (HI) for potentially toxic elements, and Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) values for mineral nutrients were calculated. In some samples in industrial and mining areas, accumulation of some potentially toxic elements was slightly above the permissible limits set by the World Health Organization (WHO). In Summary, the importance of collecting medicinal plants from protected areas such as mountainous rural areas, far from mining, close to clean rivers, and regular control of values with potentially toxic elements analyzes for human health has been understood once again.

Keywords:

• Dietary intake
• ethnobotany
• human health risk
• phytoaccumulation
• trace element

Ethical approval

This work is a systematic and meta-analysis review that not needed ethical approval and did not receive any technical or financial support from any institution and were done by the authors at their own personal expense.

Authors’ contributions

F. Karahan: Collecting the and analysis of plant samples, writing; review & editing; I.I. Ozyigit: Conceived and designed the present study, writing; A. Hocaoglu-Ozyigit: Contributed to preparation and analysis of the samples; I.E. Yalcin: Contributed to preparation and analysis of the samples, data analysis; B.N. Erkencioglu: Contributed to preparation and analysis of the samples, editing; A. Ilcim: Collecting the plant samples; All authors contributed to revisions of the manuscript and critical discussion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statements

The authors can confirm that all data generated or analyzed are included in the article.