Abstract

Background: Some of the heavy metals are considered beneficial, if intake of them is within permissible trace amount and some other are highly toxic even in trace amount. So, heavy metals intake is one of the major concerns. Heavy metals enter into body via air, water, food, clothing and some of them gets accumulate in body organs this leads to many disorders and causes life threatening diseases including cancer. All of our food comes from plants directly or indirectly. Tea the highly consuming beverage after water comes from the leaves of plant/shrub Camellia Sinensis. Methods: Aim of the present work is to determine the elements present in Tea brew (Chai, boiling the Tea leaves in water) made from black Tea leaves of major brands available in local Indian market, more specifically heavy metals Cobalt (Co), Arsenic (As), Silver (Ag), Cadmium (Cd), Indium (In), mercury (Hg) and Lead (Pb). Total eleven samples were investigated with the instrument Perkin Elmer NexIon-300x Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS). Result: Results have shown that Cobalt, Arsenic, Cadmium, Indium and Lead were present in all samples. Cobalt concentration varies from lowest 71.9 µg/kg to highest 214.3 µg/kg; Arsenic concentration varies from lowest 1.2 µg/kg to highest 53.7 µg/kg; Cadmium concentration varies from lowest 15.4 µg/kg to highest 75.03 µg/kg; Indium concentration varies from lowest 0.054 µg/kg to highest 0.70 µg/kg; Lead concentration varies from lowest 61.0 µg/kg to highest 2404.3 µg/kg. Mercury was present in two samples only in S9 and S11 with concentration 6.2 µg/kg and 1.4 µg/kg respectively; Out of eleven samples only seven samples have shown the presence of Silver its concentration varies from lowest 10.3 µg/kg to highest 193.0 µg/kg; Samples S2, S7, S8 and S10 were shown the absence of Silver and Mercury; Lead was found to be most abundant with concentration 2404.3 µg/kg and Indium was found to be least abundant with concentration 0.054 µg/kg.

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