Cadmium Contamination in Orchard Soils and Fruit Trees and Its Potential Health Risk in Guangzhou, China
ARTICLE IN PRESS + MODEL http://www.paper.edu.cn Environmental Pollution xx (2005) 1e7 Cadmium contamination in orchard soils and fruit trees and its potential health risk in Guangzhou, China J.T. Li a, J.W. Qiu b, X.W. Wang a, Y. Zhong a, C.Y. Lan a,*, W.S. Shu a,* a School of Life Sciences and State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China b Department of Biology, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, PR China Received 6 August 2005; received in revised form 19 September 2005; accepted 14 October 2005 Carambola fruit can accumulate high levels of cadmium and may be a health risk for humans. Abstract This study examines cadmium (Cd) contamination in orchard soils and fruit trees in Guangzhou, China, and assesses its potential health risk. Soils and tissues samples of three species of fruit trees were collected from three orchards. The average soil Cd concentration was 1.27, 1.84 and 0.68 mg/kg in orchards I, II, and III, respectively. The carambola (Averrhoa carambola) accumulated exceptionally high concentrations of Cd (7.57, 10.84, 9.01 and 2.15 mg/kg dw in root, twig, leaf and fruit, respectively), being 6.0e24 times and 4.0e10 times the corresponding tissue Cd in the longan (Dimocarpus longan) and wampee (Clausena lansium), respectively. Furthermore, all Cd concentrations (0.04e0.25 mg Cd/kg fw) of the fruits exceeded the tolerance limit of cadmium in foods of PR China (0.03 mg/kg fw). Our results indicate that the carambola tree has high Cd accumulation capacity and might be a Cd accumulator; and its fruit, among the three species of fruits studied, also poses the highest potential health risk to local residents.
[Show full text]