Effect of heavy metals: An overview

Recently, environmental pollution has become a serious concern worldwide. In this modern era, more Urbanization and Industrialization have led to the wide distribution of pollutants such as toxic chemicals, pesticides, petroleum products, and heavy metals in natural resources like water, soil, and air. Thus, it adversely affects plants and human beings. Currently, many heavy metals present in the environment in large amount like Cadmium, Lead, Arsenic, Mercury, and Nickel which cause a severe global environmental concern. They are more toxic to plants and human beings, as they mix with soil, they cause retardation in plant growth, reduce the nutritive value, affect photosynthesis, and also heavy metals pose harmful effects on human beings. In this review, we have summarized the adverse effect of heavy metals that alter plants' morphology, affects the germination of seeds, and growth of plants and summarized the effects of heavy metals on the humans which ultimately affects the human health.