Study area: For present study, the agriculture fields selected near the industrial area of Dhaka city, located besides the Turag River. Agricultural fields besides the Turag River were selected based on farmer’s interview where irrigation with contaminated river water has been a common practice for many years. Numerous industries (leathers, textiles, metals processing, paper mills, electronic goods, power plant, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, dyeing, power manufacturing, ink manufacturing, Pb-Zn melting, brick fields, etc.) are situated near the selected fields (Rahman et al., 2012). Most of the treated and untreated industrial effluents are being discharged to this river. Several acres of agricultural land irrigated by contaminated river water and farmers cultivate various types of vegetable crops of economic importance. The greater Dhaka city is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, home to approximately twelve million people of which less than 25% are served by sewage treatment facilities (Islam et al., 2014; Ahmad et al., 2010). The Turag River received domestic raw sewage as well as industrial effluents from the surrounding habitation and nearby industrial belt. As per the information given by the local farmers, we have identified the above area for the present study. Vegetable sampling: The sampling was conducted in February-March, 2010. The samples were collected from six agriculture fields besides the river. At each sampling station, same species of vegetables were collected as sub-samples and were thoroughly mixed to form a composite sample. Forty eight samples of eight different vegetables i.e. tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), brinjal (Solanum melongena), pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima), green amaranth (Amaranthus viridis L.), red amaranth (Amaranthus paniculatus L.), chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) and banana (Musa sp.) were collected from the selected agricultural fields. All samples were put in polythene zip-bags and transported to the laboratory on the day of sampling. Each vegetable sample was carefully washed with distilled water and the edible parts were cut into small pieces and then oven dried at 70–80°C to attain constant weight (Tiwari et al., 2011). Sample digestion All chemicals were analytical grade reagents and MilliQ water was used for solution preparation. The Teflon vessel and polypropylene containers were cleaned, soaked in 5% HNO3 for more than 24 h, then rinsed with Milli-Q water and dried. For vegetable, 0.2 g of dried sample was digested with 6 mL 69% HNO3 (Kanto Chemical Co, Japan) and 2 mL H2 O2 (Wako Chemical Co, Japan) in a Microwave Digestion System. The digested samples were then transferred into a Teflon beaker and total volume was made up to 50 mL with MilliQ water (Elix UV5 and Milli-Q, Millipore, USA). The digested solution was then filtered by using syringe filter (DISMIC® - 25HP PTFE, pore size = 0.45 µm) Toyo Roshi Kaisha, Ltd., Japan and stored in 50 mL polypropylene tubes (Nalgene, New York). Instrument analysis and quality check: For trace metals, samples were analysed by using Inductively Coupled Plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS, Agilent 7700 series). Multi-element Standard XSTC-13 (Spex CertiPrep® USA) solutions was used to prepare calibration curve. Internal calibration standard solutions containing 1.0 mg/L of Indium (In), Yttrium (Y), Beryllium (Be), Tellurium (Te), Cobalt (Co) and Thallium (TI) were purchased from Spex Certi Prep® USA. A multilement solution (Agilent Technologies, USA) 1.0 µg/L was used as tuning solution covering a wide range of masses of elements. Statistical analysis: The data were statistically analyzed using the statistical package, SPSS 16.0 (SPSS, USA). The means and standard deviations of the metal concentrations in vegetables were calculated. A Pearson bivariate correlation was used to evaluate the inter-element relationship in vegetables. Multivariate Post Hoc Tukey tests were employed to examine the statistical significance in the differences of mean concentrations of trace metals among vegetables and sites.