Trace-element contamination poses a serious threat to China's ecology, environment, food safety, and human health. Human exposure to potentially toxic trace elements is predominantly attributed to the consumption of vegetables, especially leafy vegetables, grown on metal-contaminated soil. In the present study, the concentrations of Cd in Chinese cabbage were found to decrease at an exponential rate from the outermost layer to the inner core, while there was a small change in Pb content from the 1st to the 16th layer of the plant, suddenly decreasing at the 17th layer. Although there was a little difference between the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) and the mean Cd content in the plant, from the 1st layer to the 10th layer in the edible part of Chinese cabbage, Cd concentrations were 1.1–2.5 times higher than the MPC. The Pb concentration in the whole plant was 1.9 times higher than the MPC, while the 17th layer to the 25th layer of Chinese cabbage was safe for consumption. Health risk assessment indicated that the surface layer of Chinese cabbage might cause harm to human health, especially to children, in view of cancer risk and non-cancer risk. 相似文献
The immobilization agent was the key factor that determined the success of remediation of heavy metal polluted soil. In this study, mercapto-grafted palygorskite (MP) as a novel and efficient immobilization agent was utilized for the remediation of Cd-polluted paddy soil in pot trials, and the remediation mechanisms were investigated in the aspect of soil chemistry and plant physiology with different rice cultivars as model plants. Mercapto-grafted palygorskite at applied doses of 0.1–0.3% could reduce Cd contents of brown rice and straws of different cultivars significantly. Both reduced DTPA-extractable Cd contents in rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soil and decreasing Cd contents in iron plaques on rice root surfaces confirmed that MP was an efficient immobilization agent for Cd pollutant in paddy soil. In the aspect of soil chemistry, the pH values of rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soils had no statistical changes in the MP treatment groups, but their zeta potentials decreased obviously, indicating that MP could enhance the fixation or sorption of Cd on soil compositions. In the aspect of antioxidant system, MP could increase POD activity of rice roots significantly to alleviate the stress of Cd to roots, and resulted in the decrease of T-AOC, SOD, and CAT activities of rice roots of the selected cultivars. MP had no inhabitation or enhancement effects on TSH of rice roots but enhance the contents of MTs and NPT to binding Cd to complete detoxification process. MP as a novel and efficient immobilization agent could complete the remediation effects through soil chemistry and plant physiological mechanisms.