The importance of assessing heavy metals in medicinal herbs: a quantitative study

• 발행기관: 셀메드 세포교정의약학회
• 저자명: Bhagyashree Behera Sanjib Bhattacharya
• 간행물 정보: 『셀메드』Volume 6 Issue 1, 1~4쪽, 전체 4쪽
• 주제분류: 의약학 > 의학일반
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2016.02.29

영문 초록

Consumption of herbal products from the medicinal plants contaminated with heavy metals can cause serious consequences on human health. This is a major concern for traditional and herbal medicine. The present study was carried out to analyze and quantify the levels of six potentially toxic heavy metals namely arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium and nickel in ten important Indian medicinal herbs. The air dried raw herbs were processed by microwave assisted wet digestion and analyzed by using atomic absorption spectrophotometer equipped with graphite tube atomizer. Except the chromium content in three plants, all the levels of six heavy metals analyzed were found to be quite below the permissible limits in all the ten raw medicinal herbs analyzed. The present work implies that, regular and systematic screening of raw medicinal herbs is necessary to check the levels of the heavy metal contaminants before using them for consumption or preparation of herbal formulations so that the possible contamination cannot cumulate up to the finished products.

키워드

heavy metals atomic absorption spectrophotometer medicinal herbs toxicity