Soil to grain transfer factors of heavy metals in rice and health risk analysis in the vicinity of Narora Atomic Power Station (NAPS), Narora, India

This study was conducted to investigate the uptake of heavy metals by rice grains and related health risk analysis to the people living around Narora Atomic Power Station, Narora, India. The mean heavy metal concentration for Cu, Pb, Mn, Cr, Co, Cd and Fe in soil was 27.95, 21.84, 21.71, 8.12, 5.18, 2.42 and 2300.9 mg kg^-1 respectively. The concentration of heavy metals in rice grain was 1.12, 0.237, 0.236, 0.086, 0.143, 0.034 and 63.24 mg kg^-1 for Cu, Pb, Mn, Co, Cd, Cr and Fe respectively. The rice grain accumulated all the heavy metals lesser than their concentration in the field soil. Soil to grain transfer factors for Cu, Mn, Pb, Co, Cd, Cr and Fe were 0.071, 0.015, 0.02, 0.032, 0.07, 0.005 and 0.04 respectively. The results showed that heavy metal uptake was different for different metals. The maximum transfer factor was for copper and minimum was for chromium. Total Hazard Quotient (THQ) was also calculated for all samples in accord with all metals which were lesser than significant value of 1.0.