Citation

Ofosu IW, Akomea-Frempong S, De-Graft E, Owusu-Ansah J, Darko G (2018) Exposure and Risk Assessment of Selected Chemical Hazards in Cabbage and Lettuce. J Toxicol Risk Assess 4:014. doi. org/10.23937/2572-4061.1510014

Copyright

© 2018 Ofosu IW, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE | OPEN ACCESS DOI: 10.23937/2572-4061.1510014

Exposure and Risk Assessment of Selected Chemical Hazards in Cabbage and Lettuce

Isaac W Ofosu1*, Samuel Akomea-Frempong1, Emmanuel De-Graft J Owusu-Ansah2 and Godfred Darko3

1Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Biosciences, College of Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

2Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Physical and Computational Sciences, College of Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

3Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Physical and Computational Sciences, College of Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine health risks associated with consumption of cabbage and lettuce sampled in an urban industrialized study area. Samples were initially digested in Teflon vessels using HNO3 and H2O2, homogenized in Na2SO4, agitated in a mixture of hexane/acetone, cleaned-up and analyzed in ICP - MS in order to quantify toxic heavy metals. The PAH content was also quantified in GC-MS against reference PAH congeners. Food frequency questionnaire designed based on the US EPA format, was used to collect elements of chronic daily intake and information on consumption characteristics of the selected samples. The data was processed in Palisade@Risk-based Microsoft Excel, where distributions were fitted for the elements of chronic daily intake. Exposure quantifications of hazards based on the US EPA guidelines, presented hazard quotients and risks, relative to the respective reference doses and cancer slopes factors (CSF). Incremental lifetime cancer risks (ILTCR) were determined as the product of the CSF of the carcinogens and their chronic exposures. The modal and median mercury exposures were low but the exposures of total PAHs (expressed as benzo[a]pyrene -BaP) were extremely high. The hazard quotients revealed that cadmium and mercury had negligible risks (HQ ≤ 1). Though the median and modal ILTCR showed lead to have low health risk concerns (≤ 10-6), the uncertainty ranging from 0 to 3 out-10-thousand consumers revealed insidous risk unacceptability. Similarly, even though the modal and median values of ILTCR of arsenic appeared acceptable (≤ 10-6), the risk uncertainty ranging from 0 to 6 out-1-thousand consumers, still raise health concerns. The median and modal ILTCR values of BaP suggested both a cautiously acceptable risk (≥ 10-6 ≤ 10-4) and a barely negligible risk (≤ 10-6) levels respectively. Thus, every effort must be made to mitigate the seriously high risks lurking in the study area.