Effect of car exhausts on lead contamination in vegetables grown adjacent to Kuala Lumpur - Ceras Highway

It has already been established from studies over a wide area of Kuala Lumpur that lead contamination in grass adjacent to heavy-traffic roads is hazardous to grazing cattle if local forage grass is the only source of food (Low, Lee and Arshad, 1979). In Kuala Lumpur, a number of vegetable farms are located near heavy-traffic roads and contamination of lead caused by car exhausts on these vegetables has not been reported. This paper reports the levels of lead in leafy vegetables and their supporting soils in two locations. The first was a commercial vegetable farm some 50 m from the Kuala Lumpur - Ceras Highway with heavy tra/fic density. The second was a domestic garden located on the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia campus where the flow of vehicles is generally low. In these areas deposition oflead, if any, on vegetables comes almost exclusively from automobile exhausts. There is no other known source of lead contamination in these areas.

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