ZAHIR UR REHMANSupervised By:2026-07-282026-07-282009http://repository.uop.edu.pk/123456789/497This study was conducted to investigate the heavy metals (HMs) contamination in soil and vegetable and their associated human health risk in southern selected districts (Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Hangu, and Lakki Marwat) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. The selected study area is highly vegetable growing belt, where local farmers use the agro-chemicals such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides indiscriminately. HM contamination not only damages the quality of natural resources and food but also badly impacts our food production. Soil and vegetable samples were collected from the study area in summer and winter. These samples were analyzed for selected metals such as copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), manganese (Mn), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), using atomic absorption spectrophotometry (Perkin Elmer AAS-700) in Central Recourse Laboratory, (CRL), University of Peshawar (Pakistan), while total arsenic (TAs) and its organic species such as monomethylarsonic acid (MMA) and dimethylarsonic acid (DMA) and inorganic species including arsenite (AsIII) and arsenate (AsV) in the soil and vegetable were determined using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC ICP-MS) in Arizona Laboratory for Emerging Contaminants (ALEC), University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.enThesis