| Summary: | The production of organic and conventional vegetables may pose risk to human health due to the accumulation of heavy metals, pesticides and the presence of bacterial pathogens. Thus, this study was conducted to assess the heavy metals, microbes and pesticides contamination in organic and conventional vegetables (mustard, spinach and kale) during harvest from the farm. A total of 108 samples of organic and conventional vegetables were collected from organic and conventional vegetable farms in the Gombak district. The highest amount of cadmium was in conventionally farmed kale which was 0.24 mg/kg. The determination of heavy metals in organic and conventional vegetables from farms showed that only mustard had significant difference (p = 0.019) in cadmium concentration. For the microbiological quality, the mean microbial count for E. coli of organic vegetables was higher than conventional vegetables with 2.58 and 0.85 respectively. There is a significant difference between organic and conventional vegetables in E. coli (p = 0.006) whereas there is no significant difference found in total coliform (p = 0.144). Conventional kale has been indicated as the highest prevalence with deltamethrin residue with 16.7% of the samples. For the determination of pesticide residue, there was a significant difference between organic and conventional kale (p = 0.04) whereas for the mustard and spinach, there was no significant difference in the two different types of farming. All the samples showed the Hazard Index (HI) below than one which means that there was no potential health impact due to the consumption of these vegetables. These assessments provide an overview of the food safety status of organic and conventional vegetables from farms in Malaysia. © Penerbit UMT
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