Future food contaminants: An assessment of the plant uptake of Technology-critical elements versus traditional metal contaminantsShow others and affiliations
2022 (English)In: Environment International, ISSN 0160-4120, E-ISSN 1873-6750, Vol. 169, article id 107504Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Technology-critical elements (TCEs) include most rare earth elements (REEs), the platinum group elements (PGEs), and Ga, Ge, In, Nb, Ta, Te, and Tl. Despite increasing recognition of their prolific release into the environment, their soil to plant transfer remains largely unknown. This paper provides an approximation of the potential for plant uptake by calculating bioconcentration factors (BCFs), defined as the concentration in edible vegetable tissues relative to that in cultivation soil. Here data were obtained from an indoor cultivation experiment growing lettuce, chard, and carrot on 22 different European urban soils. Values of BCFs were determined from concentrations of TCEs in vegetable samples after digestion with concentrated HNO3, and from concentrations in soil determined after 1) Aqua Regia digestion and, 2) diluted (0.1 M) HNO3 leaching. For comparison, BCFs were also determined for 5 traditional metal contaminants (TMCs; As, Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn). The main conclusions of the study were that: 1) BCF values for the REEs were consistently low in the studied vegetables;2) the BCFs for Ga and Nb were low as well;3) the BCFs for Tl were high relative to the other measured TCEs and the traditional metal contaminants; and 4) mean BCF values for the investigated TCEs were generally highest in chard and lowest in carrot. These findings provide initial evidence that there are likely to be real and present soil-plant transfer of TCEs, especially in the case of Tl. Improvements in analytical methods and detection limits will allow this to be further investigated in a wider variety of edible plants so that a risk profile may be developed.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier, 2022. Vol. 169, article id 107504
Keywords [en]
Technology-critical elements, Bioconcentration factor, Soil, Plant, Lettuce, Chard, Carrot, Food chain
National Category
Environmental Sciences
Research subject
Applied Geochemistry
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-92867DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2022.107504ISI: 000871016500002PubMedID: 36122458Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85138024130OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-92867DiVA, id: diva2:1694349
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2021–04592
Note
Validerad;2022;Nivå 2;2022-09-28 (hanlid);
Funder: Linnaeus University; ALS Scandinavia AB; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/ 0.0/16_026/0008403); Scottish Government Strategic Research Program (2022-2027)
2022-09-092022-09-092022-11-10Bibliographically approved