Impacts of Heavy Metal Pollution on Ethiopian Agriculture: A Review on the Safety and Quality of Vegetable Crops

Lack of nutritive and consumption of polluted food sources are the main health implications in African countries. Vegetable production is an optional balanced food source easily grown in the urban and rural areas. However, the levels of contaminant heavy metals in cultivated vegetables have not yet been identified. This review scrutinizes the contamination route, sources, health effects, environmental problems, food safety complications, and remedial activities of vegetable production in Ethiopian agriculture. Informal settlement, the rapid rate of urbanization, and the lack of community-based industrial expansion lead to massive increases in toxic heavy metals in ecosystems. They are supplied with food source diets unrestrictedly, mainly for vegetable consumption. Among the assessed metals, Zn (112.7 mg/kg), Cr (47.7 mg/kg), Pb (17.76 mg/kg), and Cd (0.25 mg/kg) existed in vegetables, with the highest concentrations in Ethiopia. They have negative effects on public safety, environmental security, and nutrient levels in horticultural crops. Hence, Ethiopia has no permissible standards for vegetable consumption and hazard analysis, critical control point, or food safety system. Additionally, physical, biological, and natural remedial strategies such as phytoremediation, phytoextraction, phytostabilization, rhizofiltration, bioremediation, and phytovolatilization are not applied to curtail deadly substance contents in Ethiopia. Despite this, some mitigation strategies, such as industrial waste treatment activities, are underway in Ethiopia’s universities and beer and sugar factories. This review found that the use of integrated remedial strategies could help to improve the efficiency of strategies in a sustainable manner, solid safety control for heavy metal management in Ethiopia, and management should begin with local solutions.