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In South Africa, the use of commercial herbal concoctions is becoming very popular. However, due to lack of Good Manufacturing Practices there is a possibility of heavy metal contamination in these commercial herbal concoctions. The aim of this investigation was to screen for heavy metal and trace elements in commercial herbal concoctions used in traditional medicine to treat various kinds of ailments in South Africa. This is the first investigation in which metal concentrations in commercial herbal concoctions was measured. Fourteen herbal concoctions were obtained from traditional herbal (muthi) shops and were subjected to analysis for total and bioavailable metal concentrations using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrophotometry (ICP-OES). Of all the concoctions tested only Vusa umzimba and Sejeso herbal mixture contained high amounts of Cd (2.2 and 0.6mg/kg) respectively, exceeding …