Research Article Microbial and Heavy Metal Contaminant of Antidiabetic Herbal Preparations Formulated in Bangladesh Rausan Zamir, 1 Anowar Hosen, 2 M. Obayed Ullah, 3 and Nilufar Nahar 2 1 Department of Natural Sciences, Dafodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2 Department of Chemistry, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh 3 Department of Pharmacy, Dafodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh Correspondence should be addressed to Rausan Zamir; rsnzamir@yahoo.com and M. Obayed Ullah; obayed.obhi@gmail.com Received 29 May 2015; Revised 17 September 2015; Accepted 4 October 2015 Academic Editor: Srinivas Nammi Copyright © 2015 Rausan Zamir et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Te aim of the current study was to evaluate microbial contamination in terms of microbial load (total aerobic count and total coliform count) and specifc pathogenic bacteria (Salmonella spp., Escherichia coli, particularly Escherichia coli 0157) in thirteen antidiabetic herbal preparations (ADHPs) from Dhaka City. All the thirteen ADHPs had been found contaminated with fungi and diferent pathogenic bacteria. From the data, it is found that only two of these preparations (ADHP-1 and ADHP-12) complied with the safety limit (as stated in diferent Pharmacopoeias and WHO guidelines) evaluated by all diferent microbial counts. None of these herbal preparations could assure the safety as all of them were contaminated by fungi. Te overall safety regarding heavy metal content (Zn, Cu, Mn, Cr, Cd, and Pb) was assured as none of them exceeded the safety limit of the daily intake. Microbial contaminants in these herbal preparations pose a potential risk for human health and care should be taken in every step involved in the preparation of these herbal preparations to assure safety. 1. Introduction Over the recent times, the popularity of herbal medicine is increased to such an extent that around 20% of world population is now using herbal medicine in diferent forms for diferent purposes [1]. In developing countries, it is estimated that 70–80% of the population somehow relay on nonconventional medicines mainly of herbal origins for their primary health care [2], as they are cheap and easily accessible [3]. Herbal preparations are produced from any raw or processed part of a plant, which includes leaves, stems, fowers, roots, and seeds, and in most of the cases it is a complex mixture of organic chemicals from natural sources [1, 4, 5]. As diferent plant parts are used in a herbal preparation, it may carry a large number of various kinds of microbes originating from soil usually adhering to diferent parts of herbs [5] (Table 1). Moreover, in some of the herbal preparations, particularly Ayurvedic formulation, the use of heavy metals is intentional, as some of these heavy metals are believed to have benefcial efect on our body. In general, most common contaminants are heavy metals, pesticides, microbes, and mycotoxins [6, 7]. Te range of the usage [8] of herbal preparations is vast as they are frequently used in the treatment of several chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes (diabetes mellitus). Diabetes is a noncommunicable heterogeneous group of disorder and afects approximately 200 million individuals globally. Moreover, it is predicted that over 300 million people will be diabetic by 2015 [8, 9]. In general, this poses challenges to the health care and social welfare but, in particular, it is a huge challenge to a developing country like Bangladesh because of its limited resources and weak economy. Te trend of uses of antidiabetic herbal preparations (mostly based on Ayurvedic and Unani formulary) is increasing day by day among the population of Bangladesh. In parallel, there is a rising concern regarding the safety and efcacy of these herbal preparations as most of them contain dif- ferent contaminants including microbial contaminants and heavy metals (particularly in Ayurvedic preparation). In most of the developed countries, herbal preparations are Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2015, Article ID 243593, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/243593