Health of people living in the urban village must be payed attention in developing country as results of the industrial pollution. People living this area always eat the vegetables planted by themselves, which might be exposures to a higher health risk as result of the heavy metals pollution issues. However, to our knowledge, there are few studies on investigating the latest presentation of this issue comparing that of urban village and rural village. It is imperative to clarify the transport relationship of heavy metals (such as Cd and As) from soils/irrigation water, to vegetables and to human’s hairs. In the current investigation work, we collected 83 hair samples, 16 soil samples, 8 ditch sediments, 16 irrigation water, and 49 vegetable samples in three urban villages and one rural village (as control) located at Foshan, a developed industrial city in Southern China. The pH, total C, total N and total P concentrations of soil and sediment samples, meanwhile the Cd and As concentrations of all samples were analysed. The results showed that both the Cd and As contents in human hairs of urban village were higher than that of rural village (median values, 0.036-0.038 vs 0.034 mg kg-1, and 0.17 vs 0.19-0.23 mg kg-1 for Cd and As, respectively), indicating the human living in urban village exposure to a higher health risk resulting from heavy mental pollution. The As concentrations of the four most widely consumed vegetables (i.e., Chinese flowering cabbage, leaf lettuce, sweet potato vine and India lettuce) planted in urban village were 111-858 mg kg-1, 276-4150 mg kg-1, 98.4-250 mg kg-1 and 931-4485 mg kg-1, which were significantly higher than that planted in rural village (with 16.3 mg kg-1, 236 mg kg-1, 4.65 mg kg-1 and 220 mg kg-1, respectively). Most of people buy other eatable food including meat, fish and rice from market, therefore, the vegetables containing high level of Cd and As potentially led to their health risk. Soils collected from the four villages contained Cd and As with 0.375-0.657 mg kg-1 and 10.2-16.8 mg kg-1, respectively. Farmers of urban village did not care of the cost and applied quantity of fertilizer exceeding demand of vegetable plants because the size of their vegetable garden was so small (even less than 20 m2). Consequently, the vegetable soils of urban villages were acidized dramatically and with 0.39-1.02 lower pH than that of rural village. Lower pH activated the Cd and As contained in soils and thereafter increased the Cd and As uptake by vegetable plants. In addition, nearby ditch sediments (even containing more Cd and As than soils) and Cd/As polluted river water were used as organic fertilizer and irrigation water were other two main sources of Cd and As in vegetable. In conclusion, human living in urban village were exposure to higher health risk as results of their self-supplied vegetables planted in Cd and As polluted soils with so small size and re-contaminated by irrigation water and ditch sediment, which is a new insight to urban village in developing countries.