Source and Distribution of Heavy Metal and Their Effects on Human Health

Being a naturally occurring substance Heavy Metals (HM) are irrevocably a persistent component of the environment. However, anthropogenic activities including excessive use of the HMs in agricultural, industrial, medical, painting, mining and other purposes, as well as subsequent indiscriminate disposal of these products without or with minimal treatment in the environmental matrices has caused a global upsurge of toxic HM accumulation in the nature. Which has undeniably led us on the verge of an impending crisis of possible HM toxicity by the contaminated environment. Sourced both naturally and artificially HMs are widely distributed in the nature and might be changed by environmental process and travel from one environmental compartment to other. They tend to bioaccumulate and biomagnify, in addition to being non-biodegradable thus persistent in the nature. However, they may also exert toxicity on the living organisms including human beings and thus are considered threat to health of the populace. The toxicity of HMs ranges from Neurotoxicity, Nephrotoxicity, Carcinogenicity, Hepatotoxicity, Immunological Toxicity, Cardiovascular toxicity, Dermal Toxicity, Reproductive and Developmental Toxicity and Genotoxicity. This further manifests into a range of diseases arising from these toxic pathways. The nexus of HM source-distribution-health impacts is important to be studied together for devising possible roadmaps of alleviating the present pollution load oh HMs.