Journal of Medicinal Plants Research Vol. 4(7), pp. 559-566, 4 April, 2010 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/JMPR ISSN 1996-0875© 2010 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper Determination of major and trace elements in ten important folk therapeutic plants of Haripur basin, Pakistan Shazia Jabeen 1 , Muhammad Tahir Shah 1 , Sardar Khan 2 and Muhammad Qasim Hayat 3,4 * 1 National Centre of Excellence in Geology, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan. 2 Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan. 3 Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. 4 Royal Botanical Garden, Edinburgh in association with The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Accepted 17 February, 2010 Several Pakistani plants are known to be of potential therapeutic value and are used in traditional herbal medicine system of the country. In this work, ten of the most popular routinely used medicinal plants (Achyranthes aspera, Alternanthera pungens, Brassica campestris, Cannabis sativa, Convolvulus arvensis, Hordeum vulgare, Justicia adhatoda, Parthenium hysterophorus, Ricinus communis, Withania somnifera), which are reported in literature and belong to Haripur basin, are studied first time for their trace (Zn, Cu, Cr, Ni, Co, Cd, Pb, Mn and Fe) and major (K, Na, Ca and Mg) elemental composition by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. In addition, some relevant aspects of heavy metal toxicity are also discussed. Although all plants are found to accumulate good quantity of Fe, K, Na, Ca and Mg, however, their trace heavy metal contents are high according to the international safety standards for the consumption of human beings. Key words: Haripur basin, elemental contents, medicinal herbs, medicinal plants. INTRODUCTION Therapeutic plants have always been valued as a mode of treatment of variety of ailments in folk cultures and have played a very important role in discovering the modern day medicines with novel chemical constituents (Chan, 2003; Haider et al., 2004; Devi et al., 2008; Shirin et al., 2010). Although the efficacy of medicinal plants for curative purposes is often accounted for in terms of their organic constituents like essential oils, vitamins, glycol- sides, etc. Now, it has been established fact that over dose or prolonged ingestion of medicinal plants leads to the chronic accumulation of different elements which causes various health problems (WHO, 1992; Sharma et al., 2009). In this context, elemental contents of the medi- cinal plants are very important and need to be screened for their quality control (Schroeder, 1973; Somer, 1974; Liang et al., 2004; Arceusz et al., 2010). *Corresponding author. E-mail: mqasimhayat@hotmail.com In recent years, several authors all across the world, reported many studies on the importance of elemental constituents of the herbal drug plants which enhanced the awareness about trace elements in these plants (Wong et al., 1993 in China; Sharma et al., 2009 in India; Sheded et al., 2006 in Egypt; Koe and Sari, 2009, Basgel and Erdemoglu, 2006 in Turkey; Ajasa et al., 2004 in Nigeria; Kanias and Loukis, 1987 in Greece). Most of these studies concluded that essential metals can also produce toxic effects when the metal intake is in high concentrations, whereas non-essential metals are toxic even in very low concentrations for human health. Phytotherapy is also a common practice in Pakistan (Hayat et al., 2008; Hayat et al., 2009; Ashraf et al., 2010). Overseas reports are scanty with respect to ele- mental constituents of endemic herbal plants of Pakistan. The present study was carried out in Haripur basin quite rich in medicinal plants (Figure 1). Several ethno- botanical studies (Marwat et al., 2004; Hussain et al., 2008; Abbasi et al., 2009) in the basin have documented