Heavy Metal Content and Health Risk Assessment of Some Selected Medicinal Plants from Obuasi, a Mining Town in Ghana

Table 7

Pearson’s correlation.

Metal	Arsenic (As)	Cadmium (Cd)	Chromium (Cr)	Mercury (Hg)	Manganese (Mn)	Nickel (Ni)	Lead (Pb)
Arsenic (As)	1.000
Cadmium (Cd)	0.177	1.000
Chromium (Cr)	0.672	0.060	1.000
Mercury (Hg)	0.006	0.085	−0.060	1.000
Manganese (Mn)	0.014	0.597	0.039	0.298	1.000
Nickel (Ni)	0.074	−0.003	0.052	−0.047	−0.011	1.000
Lead (Pb)	−0.245	0.218	−0.095	−0.035	0.471	0.305	1.000

The degree of correlation and relationship between heavy metals was determined using Pearson’s correlation in Microsoft Excel 2019. In Table 7, As shows a positive relationship with Cr while Mn shows a positive correlation with Cd. Hg showed negative correlations with Ni and Pb. Weak correlations of As were observed between Cd, Mn, and Ni. The strongly positive relationship between the metals in Table 7 shows strong significant frequent interactions, toxicity profile, and a common source of pollution whereby weak correlations exhibit no strong significant association between the metals’ sources of pollution. In addition, the negative correlations represent a non-significant relationship between the metals.