Abstract
Wastewater is a source of some nutrients essential for soil fertility but include various types of contaminants like heavy metals that pollute the soil and crops. In this regard, an experiment was carried out to evaluate the possible health risks of heavy metals in forages. Forages both of summer and winter were grown with different water treatments (sewage water and tap water) in Department of Botany, University of Sargodha. The concentration of manganese in water, root and forage samples was determined. Moreover, bioconcentration factor, pollution load index, daily intake of metals and health risk index were calculated. In tap water the manganese value was 0.063 mg/L and in sewage water 0.067 mg/L, respectively. In soil the calculated manganese value was lower than USEPA standards. The maximum average concentration of manganese in the leaves was 0.553 mg/kg occurred in Sesbania rostrata. The maximum observed value for manganese bioconcentration factor in Trifolium resupinatum was (4.495) grown in winter. The maximum pollution load index was observed for manganese (0.0302). The maximum value for daily intake of metals observed was 0.0125 and maximum observed health risk index was 9.84.