Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
was dissolved in 5ml of 20% hydrochloric acid and the solution was carefully transferred
into a 100ml volumetric flask. The solution was filtered using Whatman No 1 filter paper
(Umoren and Onianwa, 2005) into a 50ml volumetric flask and made up to the mark with
distilled deionised water. The samples were taken to the Shimadzu atomic absorption
spectrophotometer (model 6650) for aspiration.
The determination of heavy metal (Fe, Zn, Cr, Pb and Cd) content of the sample solution
was carried out in accordance with the procedure of the AOAC (1984) on dry samples.
4. Results and discussion
The results of the heavy metal analysis of the bitter leaf samples are shown in table 1.
Sample
Location
Fe
Pb
Cr
Cd
Zn
Bitter Leaf
PH-Aba Road
2.96
0.220
0.030
ND
0.890
Bitter leaf
Akpajo-Eleme Road
3.43
0.405
0.052
ND
1.08
Bitter leaf
Refinary-Akpajo Road 3.27
0.350
0.041
ND
1.12
Mean
3.22
0.325
0.042
ND
1.03
Bitter leaf
Kina Gbara Street
2.21
0.156
0.024
ND
0.84
ND = not detected.
Table 1.
Concentration (mg/kg) of heavy metal in bitter leaf
The results in table 1 show that the concentrations (mg/kg) of the heavy metals fall within
the following range: iron (Fe) is 2.21 to 3.43, lead (Pb) is 0.156 to 0.405, chromium (Cr) is
0.024 to 0.052, zinc (Zn) is 0.840 to 1.12, while Cadmium (Cd) was not detected in any of the
locations.
Figure 1.
Bar Chart for the concentration of heavy metals
