International Journal of Environment, Agriculture and Biotechnology, 5(6) Nov-Dec, 2020 | Available: https://ijeab.com/ ISSN: 2456-1878 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijeab.56.30 1641 Monitoring of Heavy Metal Content in Leafy Vegetables Irrigated with Different Water Sources Swati Singh Chandel 1,* , Amar Singh Rana 1 , Ram Bharose 2 1 Research Scholar (PhD), Department of Environmental Sciences and NRM, Sam Higgin bottom University of Agriculture Technology and Sciences, Allahabad, India 2 Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences and NRM, Sam Higgin bottom University of Agriculture Technology and Sciences, Allahabad, India *Corresponding Author: swati.singh197@gmail.com Received: 01 Nov 2020; Received in revised form: 11 Dec 2020; Accepted: 22 Dec 2020; Available online: 30 Dec 2020 ©2020 The Author(s). Published by Infogain Publication. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Abstract— The present research was conducted to calculate levels of different heavy metals like Fe, Mn, Cu, and Zn in leafy vegetables when grown with different water sources. The result showed quite high range of accumulation when the vegetables were irrigated with wastewater. Wastewater irrigated vegetables showed variations (115-377), (12-68), (5.2-16.8), (21-45) mg/kg for iron, manganese, copper and zinc. Highest toxic level of iron and manganese were detected in mint and spinach and carrot showed highest value of copper and zinc. From the present study we can conclude that the vegetables grown from these water resources will lead to heavy metal accumulation in human body i.e. for both adult and children if they continuously consume these vegetables. For this regular monitoring of these heavy metals is needed in order to prevent excessive metal accumulation in the body. However the results obtained from the present study shows that the ranges of heavy metal were below the permissible limit set by WHO/FAO. Keywords— Heavy metals, vegetables, daily requirement, waste water effluent, human health. I. INTRODUCTION Due to easy availability of wastewater and scarcity of freshwater, it is mostly used for irrigation of vegetables 1 . Waste irrigation is thought to make a considerable contribution to heavy wastewater. The metal content of the soil are very harmful due their non- biodegradable nature and they can easily get assemble indifferent parts of the body. These metals are harmful because they can easily dissolve in water.A small amount of these metals is harmful because there is no proper method to remove these metals from our body.Heavy metals find their use in many industrial applications and so there are widely spread. Due to this reason the available waste water have large unit of these heavy metals in them as which when indirectly used for irrigation severely effects human body 2 . Excess amount of accumulation in agricultural land irrigated by wastewater affects the food quality The metal requirement in our body is obtained from the food and water that we consume and this in turn directly exposes us from the entry of toxic heavy metals. Vegetables are an important ingredient of human diet that contains essentials nutrients like vitamins, minerals dietary fiber and antioxidants 3 . Leaves from different plant species such as perennial, annuals are consumed especially in rural areas, and there has been an increased trend of the consumption among the persons living in metro cities. Vegetables which have leaves as edible part are an economic source to ensure the micronutrient intake. Examples include Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Lettuce, Coriander, Spinach and Turnip. Rapid industrialization and the use of natural resources have increased the accumulation of toxic substances like heavy metals in the soil. The required protein and vitamin which are supplied by vegetables are best to act against rough digestion and prevents constipation are supplied by vegetables 4 .The current research work was