Investigation of Heavy Metals Accumulation in Different Tissues of Laboratory Rat

Abstract

Abstract: Background and Aim: In recent decades, industrial, agricultural and urban activities have led to pollution and accumulation of heavy metals in soils and plants which directly or indirectly affects humans and animals lives. Nowadays, pollutant accumulation in most agricultural products is much higher than the permissible limit due to the excessive use of fertilizers. The main objective of the present study was to investigate the accumulated proportions of heavy metals such as copper, lead and cadmium in different tissues of laboratory rat. Materials and Methods: In this study, the accumulation and distribution of heavy metals were investigated in different organs of rats under various nutritional conditions. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with greenhouse strawberry treatments in three groups.Different groups of rats (27 rats) were fed strawberries infected with heavy metals by oral gavage within a three-month period. Regarding the average weight of rats, 0.5 gram of fresh strawberry was considered for each rat. In addition, heavy metals solution including cadmium (15.773 mg / l), lead (41.560 mg / l) and copper (9.445 mg / l) were exerted to the plant. In the next stage of procedure, heavy metals (cadmium, copper and lead) accumulated in different organs of the rats (kidney, liver, pancreas, Testicle, spleen, and brain) were measured. Results: Results showed that the concentrations of studied heavy metals in the strawberries were 7.7, 26 and 3.2 mg/kg for cadmium, lead and copper respectively, which were higher than Iranian standard level. The statistical results showed that there was a significant difference between the different organs in the intake of the heavy metals, so that in the infected treatment, the most and lowest amounts of cadmium were in the kidney (0.41 g / day) and the brain (0.24 g / day), respectively. Heavy metals caused reduction in the rate of weight gain of rats. The accumulation of these elements was higher in the kidney, liver and pancreas than other organs. The least accumulation of heavy metals was related to the rat’s brain, while highest proportion of the heavy metals accumulation was in the kidney. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that if strawberry quality is not evaluated properly and distributed throughout community in the contaminated form, it can pose many harmful effects on the community’s health. Therefore, the quality control should be carried out with high precision.

Keywords

• Contamination
• Lead
• Toxicity
• Cadmium
• Copper