Original article Trace heavy metal contents of some spices and herbal plants from western Anatolia, Turkey Umit Divrikli, 1 * Nesrin Horzum, 1 Mustafa Soylak 2 & Latif Elci 1 1 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Art and Sciences, Pamukkale University, 20020, Denizli, Turkey 2 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Art and Sciences, Erciyes University, 38039, Kayseri, Turkey (Received 6 April 2005; Accepted in revised form 17 November 2005) Summary Trace metal levels in eleven different spice and herbal plant species from western Anatolia, Turkey were determined by atomic absorption spectrometry. The contents of trace metals in the herbal plant samples were found in the ranges: 3.8–35.4 lgg )1 for copper, 0.2–2.7 lgg )1 for cadmium, 0.1–2.8 lgg )1 for lead, 1.4– 11.3 lgg )1 for nickel, 0.1–9.7 lgg )1 for chromium, 30.0–945.3 lgg )1 for iron, 7.9–152.5 lgg )1 for manganese and 5.2–83.7 lgg )1 for zinc. Results obtained are in agreement with data reported in the literature. Keywords Atomic absorption spectrometry, herbal plants, spices, traces heavy metals. Introduction Heavy metals have important positive and negative roles in human life (Adriano, 1984; Slaveska et al., 1998; Divrikli et al., 2003; Dundar & Saglam, 2004; Colak et al., 2005; Oktem et al., 2005). Some of the heavy metals are considered essential including iron, zinc and copper. Some metal ions like cadmium, lead and mercury have toxic roles in biochemical reactions on our body. There is a strong link between micronutrient nutrition of plants, animals and humans and the uptake and impact of contaminants in these organisms (De Leonardis et al., 2000; Yuzbasi et al., 2003; Baslar et al., 2005; Yaman et al., 2005). The content of essential elements in plants is conditional, the content being affected by the characteristics of a soil and the ability of plants to selectively accumulate some metals. Additional sources of heavy metals for plants are: rainfall, traffic density, use of oil or fossil fuels for heating, atmospheric dusts, plant protection agents, and fertilizers, which could be adsorbed through the leaf blades (Kovacheva et al., 2000; Lozak et al., 2002; Atrouse et al., 2004). In addition, they could be contaminated from various species including trace metals as farmers wash them with waste water before bringing them to market. Spices and herbal plants contain heavy metal ions over a wide range of concentrations. As each element has one or more specific structural or functional roles in the plant, in the absence of that element, the plant will be expected to exhibit certain morphological or bio- chemical symptoms of that deficiency (Hopkins, 1995; Chizzola et al., 2003; Ozcan, 2004; Lemos et al., 2005; Ozcan et al., 2005; Soylak et al., 2005). Some of these elements are toxic to humans even at considerably low concentrations. Especially, toxic trace heavy metals like cadmium and lead are known to pose a variety of health risks such as cancer, mutations or miscarriages (Weigert, 1991). People in western Anatolia region of Turkey consume large amounts of spices and herbal plants for various purposes, especially for healthy life. Therefore, the metal toxicity has attracted concern over safety of spices and herbal plants consumption in western Ana- tolia, Turkey. In the present work, the concentrations of copper, iron, nickel, cadmium, manganese, lead, chromium and zinc in the spice and herbal plant samples purchased from farms around western Anatolia region of Turkey were investigated by flame atomic absorption spectro- metry. Materials and methods Apparatus The instrumental detection system used was a Perkin Elmer AAnalyst 700 model atomic absorption spectro- meter (Norwalk, CT, USA). The operating parameters for working elements were set as recommended by the manufacturer. The parameters are given in Table 1. Reagent blank determinations were used to correct the instrument readings. Calibration standard solutions were prepared from stock metal standard solutions. The concentrations of analytes were obtained directly *Correspondent: Fax: +90 258 2125546; e-mail: udivrikli@pamukkale.edu.tr International Journal of Food Science and Technology 2006, 41, 712–716 712 doi:10.1111/j.1365-2621.2005.01140.x Ó 2006 Institute of Food Science and Technology Trust Fund