Concentration of heavy metals in Iranian market rice and associated population health risk

Heavy metals contamination, constituting an important public health threat, is considered to be a major problem of environmental systems. In this study, the heavy metal contamination of several famous rice types; both domestic and imported, was investigated. In addition, the risk assessment of heavy metal-contaminated rice was characterised by average estimated daily intakes (EDIs), target hazard quotient (THQs), and hazard index (HI) of the Iranian population. The EDIs for Pb, As and Cd from rice was 0.217, 0.183 and 0.090 μg/kg bw/day, respectively. THQs of individual element for all metals was less than one, indicating that health risk associated with the intake of a single element through consumption of rice was negligible. The HI of heavy metals was 0.331. It shows that for the general people there is no health risk to Pb, As and Cd by the rice intake.