Asensio 2023 - Mercury and methylmercury in Madrid market mushrooms
Asensio measured cadmium, lead, total mercury, and methylmercury in 48 edible mushroom samples from Madrid markets. The strongest occurrence signal was total mercury in wild mushrooms: wild mushrooms averaged 0.15 mg/kg total Hg, while cultivated mushrooms averaged 0.007 mg/kg. One wild Lepista panaeolus sample reported 0.97 mg/kg total Hg and 0.12 mg/kg MeHg, with MeHg representing 13% of total mercury in that sample.
Key numbers
The source reports concentrations as mg/kg in the tested mushrooms. Because the paper describes fresh market mushrooms homogenized directly before digestion and does not report drying, these values are treated as fresh-as-purchased unless a later correction from the author or publisher indicates otherwise.
Summary rows from Table III:
| Matrix/species | n | Cd min-max; mean (mg/kg) | Pb min-max; mean (mg/kg) | tHg min-max; mean (mg/kg) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cultivated mushrooms | 15 | <0.004-0.074; 0.030 | <0.010-0.036; 0.029 | <0.0050-0.0070; 0.0070 |
| Agaricus bisporus | 6 | <0.0040-<0.0040; not quantifiable | <0.010-0.036; 0.027 | <0.0050-<0.0050; not quantifiable |
| Agaricus brunnescens | 3 | <0.0040-0.070; 0.070 | <0.010-0.034; 0.034 | <0.0050-0.0070; 0.0070 |
| Lentinula edodes | 3 | 0.0040-0.080; 0.053 | <0.010-<0.010; not quantifiable | <0.0050-<0.0050; not quantifiable |
| Pleurotus ostreatus, cultivated | 2 | 0.012-0.030; 0.021 | <0.010-<0.010; not quantifiable | <0.0050-<0.0050; not quantifiable |
| Wild mushrooms | 33 | 0.0070-0.24; 0.063 | <0.010-0.30; 0.046 | <0.0050-0.97; 0.15 |
| Boletus edulis | 4 | 0.027-0.12; 0.078 | 0.015-0.033; 0.025 | 0.090-0.52; 0.24 |
| Hydnum repandum | 4 | 0.012-0.031; 0.024 | 0.012-0.049; 0.025 | 0.021-0.40; 0.14 |
| Lactarius delicius | 5 | 0.019-0.076; 0.038 | <0.010-0.065; 0.016 | 0.025-0.10; 0.048 |
| Lepista panaeolus | 1 | 0.11 | 0.024 | 0.97 |
| Macrolepiota procera | 1 | 0.24 | 0.30 | 0.55 |
Methylmercury speciation was performed only on the 10 samples exceeding 0.075 mg/kg total Hg. Table IV reports quantifiable MeHg in three samples: Lepista panaeolus had 0.12 mg/kg MeHg with 0.97 mg/kg total Hg, Macrolepiota procera had 0.015 mg/kg MeHg with 0.55 mg/kg total Hg, and one Boletus edulis sample had 0.022 mg/kg MeHg with 0.52 mg/kg total Hg. The remaining higher-Hg samples were reported as <0.010 mg/kg MeHg.
The author states that all cadmium and lead results complied with applicable maximum limits. For total mercury, one Lepista panaeolus sample exceeded the 0.50 mg/kg EU limit for wild mushrooms under Regulation (EU) 2018/73. No Boletus spp. sample reached the 0.90 mg/kg comparator for Boletus.
Methods (brief)
Cadmium, lead, and total mercury were measured by ICP-MS after acid digestion of 0.5 g homogenized sample with nitric acid, water, hydrochloric acid, and hydrogen peroxide. The ICP-MS method used Agilent 7900 instrumentation and measured 111Cd, 202Hg, and summed lead isotopes 206, 207, and 208. Methylmercury was extracted from 0.2 g sample using L-cysteine/HCl at 60 C for 30 minutes, centrifuged, filtered, and determined by HPLC-ICP-MS. The heavy-metals method is reported as ISO 17025-accredited and compliant with Regulation (EC) 333/2007 criteria; the MeHg method was still in the accreditation process.
Implications
Certification: This is direct occurrence evidence for edible mushrooms on a fresh-as-purchased basis. Wild and cultivated mushroom rows should not be pooled silently: the source reports much higher total Hg in wild mushrooms than in cultivated mushrooms, and the highest total Hg value is in a wild Lepista sample. MeHg is not interchangeable with total Hg; in this source the quantifiable MeHg fraction was at most 13% of total Hg.
Courses: The paper is useful for teaching speciation discipline. It shows why a total-Hg screening result in mushrooms does not automatically imply a fish-like MeHg profile.
App: The source supports a higher concern flag for wild mushrooms than cultivated mushrooms for total Hg, with a species-sensitive note for Lepista and Macrolepiota. For general cultivated mushroom exposure, the reported total Hg values are near or below 0.007 mg/kg.
Wiki pages this source may touch
- mushrooms
- wild-mushrooms
- non-root-vegetables
- wild-mushrooms
- cadmium
- lead
- mercury-total
- mercury-methyl
Verification notes
The DOI, title, author, year, publication, sample count, methods, and tables were taken from the PDF article text in the September 2023 Spectroscopy issue. The PDF SHA-256 at ingest was 411d4a46de9f89479989aa65ddbecef3b0d250c36f0e68e747a45dbd59c038aa. The article byline gives the author as Javier Peinador Asensio; the cite key uses Asensio as the surname token. The article title says “Methyl-Mercury”; the body and method use methylmercury/MeHg. Table III is the source for Cd, Pb, and total Hg summary statistics; Table IV is the source for MeHg values. The source reports total mercury separately from methylmercury and does not support substituting total Hg values for MeHg occurrence.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 68051c8 | 2026-06-04 | ingest auto-fetched 2026-06-04: asensio2023-madrid-mushrooms-mercury |