Influence of Heavy Metal on Food Security: Recent Advances

Abstract

Food safety has been identified as one of the highly placed sustainable goals because of its relevance to the sustainability and well-being of mankind. Over the years human being is faced with several adverse effects that normally result in uncountable impairment in their health. This might be linked to the high level of contamination and environmental pollution as a result of heavy metal due to various anthropogenic activities as well as several agricultural and environmental activities. It has been observed that heavy metal can affect human metabolomics which normally results in a high level of morbidity in several countries most especially in developing countries. Therefore, this review intends to discuss extensively the influence of heavy metal contamination on mankind health and their eventual safety. Special emphasis was also laid on the influence of heavy metal on food contamination as a result of environmental and agricultural activities through the application of pesticides which normally lead to a high level of adsorption and accumulation of these toxic metal elements. Also, this chapter also elucidates the modes of action through various molecular and physiological translocation leads to the movement of these toxic metals into food crops. On the whole, several sustainable preventive and management strategies were proposed on how sustainability could be maintained in soil-food subsystems.