Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Assessment of Heavy Metal Content of Branded Pakistani Herbal Products

Muhammad Saeed , Naveed Muhammad, Haroon Khan, Zakiullah .

Department of Pharmacy, University of Peshawar, Peshawar-25120, Pakistan;

For correspondence:- Muhammad Saeed Email: saeedrph2000@yahoo.com

Received: 23 October 2010 Accepted: 29 May 2011 Published: 20 August 2011

Citation: Saeed M, Muhammad N, Khan H, . Z. Assessment of Heavy Metal Content of Branded Pakistani Herbal Products. Trop J Pharm Res 2011; 10(4):499-506 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v10i4.16

© 2011 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the heavy metals present in branded Pakistani herbal medicines used in the management of various human ailments.

Method: The herbal dosage forms assessed were tablets, capsules and syrups. The samples were prepared for analysis by wet digestion method using nitric acid and perchloric acid treatment and then analyzed using a flame atomic absorption spectrometer.

Results: Most of the products exceeded the permissible limits for lead (100 %), cadmium (68 %), chromium (96 %) and nickel (100 %). However, the contents of copper, manganese, zinc and iron were below toxic limits in several of the products. Some of the products, including Arq-e-badian, Bazori, Banafsha and Arq-Mako, exhibited toxic concentration of almost all the metals assessed.

Conclusion: There is need to design suitable quality control parameters for the validation of herbal products and/or implement already existing rules and regulations for the safety of end-users.

Keywords: Heavy metals, Branded herbal products, Validation, Toxicity