Seenivasan  S. , Muraleedharan  N.

1.The Institute of Environmental and Human Health, Texas Tech University, Lubbock – 79415, Texas, USA
2.Tea Research Association, Tocklai Tea Research Institute, Jorhat-785008, Assam, India
Author    Correspondence author
Journal of Tea Science Research, 2015, Vol. 5, No. 10   doi: 10.5376/jtsr.2015.05.0010
Received: 13 Sep., 2015    Accepted: 23 Oct., 2015    Published: 09 Dec., 2015

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Seenivasan S., Muraleedharan N., 2015, Cumulative effect of foliar application of copper oxychloride on Pb content in black tea, Journal of Tea Science Research, 5(10), 1-4 (doi: 10.5376/jtsr.2015.05.00010)

Copper oxychloride was found as one of the sources of lead contamination in tea as this fungicide is being widely used in tea fields to control the blister blight disease. In India, there is no specification for this heavy metal in copper oxychloride formulations. Commercial brands of copper oxychloride were collected from market and analyzed for lead (Pb) an element of environmental concern. Results were compared with limits prescribed by Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of United Nations with a view that these results could be used for fixing limits of heavy metal impurities in national level for the copper oxychloride formulations. Field trials were initiated using the lead contaminated copper oxychloride and in combination with hexaconazole. The study indicates lead contaminated copper oxychloride is one of the sources for lead contamination in black tea. The accumulation of lead content in tea was positively correlated with the application of contaminated copper oxychloride formulations.

Fungicide; Impurities; Food chain