Environmental Pollution with Heavy Metals: A Public Health Concern

Mir Mohammad Ali, Delower Hossain, Al- Imran, Md. Suzan Khan, Maksuda Begum and Mahadi Hasan Osman

A chapter in Heavy Metals - Their Environmental Impacts and Mitigation from IntechOpen

Abstract: Heavy metals (HMs) are natural environmental constituents, but their geochemical processes and biochemical equilibrium have been altered by indiscriminate use for human purposes. Due to their toxicity, persistence in the environment and bioaccumulative nature; HMs are well-known environmental contaminants. As result, there is excess release into natural resources such as soil and marine habitats of heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium, arsenic, mercury, lead, nickel, copper, zinc, etc. Their natural sources include the weathering of metal-bearing rocks and volcanic eruptions, while mining and other industrial and agricultural practices include anthropogenic sources. Prolonged exposure and increased accumulation of such heavy metals may have detrimental effects on human life and aquatic biota in terms of health. Finally, the environmental issue of public health concern is the pollution of marine and terrestrial environments with toxic heavy metals. Therefore, because of the rising degree of waste disposal from factories day by day, it is a great concern. Pollution of HMs is therefore a problem and the danger of this environment needs to be recognized.

Keywords: Bioaccumulation; Contamination; Heavy metal; Health hazard; Soil; Toxicity; Water (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/76739 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:219023

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.96805

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().