Peculiarities of accumulation of heavy metals and arsenic in medicinal plant raw materials of plain thousand, collected in urban and agribiocenoses of the Voronezh region

Abstract

The Voronezh region is traditionally the most important area of crop production and farming. The purpose of the study was to study contamination by heavy metals and arsenic of medicinal vegetable raw materials of the Voronezh region on the example of plain thousand-year-old grass collected in urban and agro-ecological systems with different anthropogenic effects. The study was carried out by atomic absorption spectrometry on the basis of atomic absorption spectrometer MGA-915MD pharmacopoeia methods, accumulation of heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, copper, zinc, cobalt, chromium) and arsenic was studied in 51 samples of large planter leaves. Comparing the data on heavy metal content in the upper soil layers of the region and the content of these elements in the grass of the common thousand, it can be argued that there are significant physiological barriers to the accumulation of ecotoxicants in the plant, which is particularly noticeable for elements such as lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, cobalt and chromium. The thousand-year-old is able to selectively concentrate some heavy metals entering the active centers of enzyme systems (such as copper and zinc, for example) if their environmental content is below some vital level; With significant content of these elements in soils, the plant also physiologically blocked their entry into the above-ground part of the plant. The results of studies have shown that plain thousand grass is able to accumulate toxic elements from soils in a significant amount, which is important in planning the places of production of medicinal vegetable raw materials and assessing its quality.