1.1 Introduction
Cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr) and lead (Pb) are the heavy metals of most concern because they can affect human health even in small quantities. Wa˚ngstrand et al. (2007) reported that application of nitrogen fertilizers containing ammonium-N may increase Cd concentrations in plants, even if the fertilizers do not contain significant levels of heavy metals. In addition, Atafar et al. (2010) were also observed that application of some non-heavy metal fertilizers can potentially increase concentrations of Cd, Cr, and Pb in plants.
Accordingly, determining the available forms of heavy metals in soils is an important approach to the soil contamination assessment, especially in greenhouse areas which have great impact on environment and human health due to intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides containing heavy metals. The intensification of agricultural soil use, and changes in farming practice, characterized by intensive application of fertilizers and pesticides may cause soil pollution by heavy metals in greenhouses (Nouri et al., 2008). Namely, many chemical products used in agriculture, especially nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers, contain certain amounts of heavy metals, as result of their production from minerals used as a source of these elements.
Although the low level of heavy metals in fertilizers and pesticides in one-time use do not pose any hazard of soil or plant contamination, their long-term use in food crops production, especially in greenhouse vegetable production, contributed to the accumulation of heavy metals in the soils and consequently in food crops (Huang and Jin, 2008). However, up to now, heavy metal concentrations of greenhouse soil in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its pollution problem have been studied very little, especially there is no systematical investigation of the dynamics of heavy metals in the greenhouse soil-plant system in intensive tomato production. Since the heavy metals have a long residence time in soils, it is very important to study the status of heavy metals in soil, and their influence on vegetable safety, and consequently human health.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
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