SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION AND SOURCE APPORTIONMENT OF HEAVY METAL CONTAMINATION IN STREET-ROASTED PLANTAIN ACROSS URBAN MICROENVIRONMENTS IN BENIN CITY, NIGERIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20818059Keywords:
Heavy metals, source apportionment, Pollution Load Index, Principal Component Analysis, street-roasted plantain, Benin CityAbstract
Spatial information on the origins of heavy metal contamination in street-vended foods is essential for evidence-based urban food-safety governance. This study combined the Geo-accumulation Index (Igeo), Contamination Factor (CF), Pollution Load Index (PLI), Pearson correlation, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) to characterise the spatial variability and source apportionment of iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu) and lead (Pb) in street-roasted plantain (Musa paradisiaca L.) from ten urban microenvironments in Benin City, Nigeria. Concentrations were determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Copper exceeded the FAO/WHO limit of 0.5 mg/kg at all ten sites, peaking at 2.67 mg/kg at New Benin, whereas Pb and Zn stayed below their limits everywhere. The PLI exceeded unity at every site, from 1.63 (Iyaro) to 2.60 (New Benin), indicating city-wide enrichment above background. PCA resolved two components explaining 80.5% of variance: PC1 (57.9%) loaded positively on Fe, Zn and Cu with a contrasting negative Pb loading, and PC2 (22.6%) was Pb-dominated. Only Zn-Cu was significantly correlated (r = 0.67, p < 0.05), and HCA independently separated Fe-Zn-Cu from Pb. These results indicate two contrasting pathways, a diffuse commercial-cookware signal for Fe-Zn-Cu and a traffic-linked signal for Pb, informing targeted regulation of street-food vending.
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