Mercury Speciation in Seafood: A Systematic Review

Overview

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Key numbers

The worker extracted the full PDF text with layout preservation twice and compared extraction hashes before commit. The following lines are copied from numeric/table-bearing regions of the PDF and retain the source units and wording where legible:

• 2023/915, the maximum level for total mercury in fish muscle meat is set at 0.3 or 0.5 mg/kg
• 1.3 µg/kg body weight, expressed as mercury, based on developmental neurotoxicity as
• of THg in fish muscle (commonly reported around 80–90%); however, this proportion may
• (≈10–15%) despite high THg levels (8). Consequently, reliance on THg measurements intro-
• in Table 1, most studies rely on acidic extraction, typically using hydrochloric (HCl) or acetic
• Table 1. Extraction procedures and chromatographic conditions adopted for mercury speciation in seafood.
• iHg HPLC-ICP- µg/kg MeHg: 0.01–0.05 NIST SRM
• 1 CRM centrifugation, 150 min Guard column: 0.2% 2-ME, 1% – 12 min. (14)
• MeHg MS MeHg: 1–4280 98–102% µg/L 2976
• 2 MeHg and extraction – GC-ECD Helium 21 µg/kg – – (15)
• muscle) µg/kg (30 m × 0.53 mm ± 2.5% BCR-464
• MeHg: 3–2230 (ODS Hypersyl 20% APDC and iHg: 0.4 µg/kg DOLT-4
• 3 MAE with HCl <1 h µg/kg 250 mm A 4.6 NH4 Ac solution MeHg: 0.3 – TORT-2 8 min. (4)
• samples MeHg AFS 80–102%
• iHg: 6–85 µg/kg mm id, 5 mm, and 80% MeOH µg/kg BCR-463
• 12 species of UAE: 0.1% 2-ME, MeHg: 40–1920 Tracer Spherisorb 0.05% 2-ME, 0.075% MeHg: 7.7
• 4 commercial fish 0.05% L-cysteine 30 min µg/kg C8 5 µm (100 L-cysteine and 0.06 µg/kg – <10 min (16)
• MeHg MS 93–99% DORM-2
• in Cuba and 0.1% HCl iHg: <62 mg/kg mm × 4.6 mm) M NH4 Ac buffer iHg: 5.2 µg/kg
• 5 mackerel, and MeHg Treatment of 50 min GC-MS mm i.d. × 30 m Helium – 80–110% – 9 min (17)
• µg/kg BCR-464
• bluewing 4 mm) and guard iHg: 1.7 µg/kg
• iHg mL of L-Cys, LC-CVG- MeHg: <500 0.1% L-cysteine 0.10–5 DORM-2
• 6 searobin, flatfish, 1–18 h column Si-C18 MeHg: 2.3 97–102% 6 min (18)
• MeHg centrifugation, ICP-MS µg/kg solution at pH 4 µg/L DOLT-3
• pirarucu, salmon, (Allchrom, 4 × 3 µg/kg
• whale samples MeHg: >1000 0.0015 µg/L DOLT-4
• 7 MeHg mL clear digest 40 min specific 100% PDMS mM APDC (HPLC), 88–104% µg/L 15 min (19)
• 0.01 M HCl, Zorbax C18 (100 iHg: 0.2 µg/kg
• MeHg ◦ C), MS fish and fishery 60 mM NH4 Ac, pH 98.5% µg/L DORM-2
• MeHg HPLC-ICP- 9–88.2 µg/kg, (Lichrospher- L-Cys, 12.5 mM µg/L MeHg: 13.3
• EtHg MS EtHg, PhHg: not ODS, 200 × 4.6 (NH4 )2 HPO4 , 0.05% EtHg: 0.0047 92.67% min
• PhHg detected mm, 5 µm) triethylamine, pH µg/L
• iHg: 0.047 µg/kg
• MWCNTs, 10 mg MSPD- iHg: 9.9 µg/L iHg: 94%
• with <1000 µg/kg for NIST SRM
• commercial MeHg 0.25- µm) µg/kg 20–900
• seafood, 2 frozen EtHg capillary column EtHg: 1.95 µg/L
• 12 MeHg AcOH-NaOAc – HP-5–5% phenyl Helium – 99.9% – (24)
• meat, whale IDMS halibut muscle µg/kg BCR-464
• SPME with iHg: 0.5 µg/kg
• 13 CRM MeHg 4h nd length × 0.32 Argon 90–105% 0.5–50 10 min (25)

Methods (brief)

• emerging methodologies based on biosensors. Hyphenated techniques such as HPLC–
• ICP-MS and GC–ICP-MS have enabled significant advancements in mercury speciation
• ments, such as inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), atomic fluores-
• cence spectroscopy (AFS), and direct mercury analyzers based on thermal decomposition–
• amalgamation atomic absorption spectrometry. These methods are highly sensitive; how-
• detectors are required. Mercury speciation involves three steps: sample preparation, sepa-
• samples exclusively using HPLC-ICP-MS. Nonetheless, no recent review has provided
• analytical parameters such as limits of detection (LODs), linearity ranges, and recoveries,
• addressed in existing review papers, as most biosensor studies focus on aqueous samples
• LODs, and analysis time are critically assessed.
• including chromatograph, HPLC, LC, GC, “liquid chromatography”, “gas chromatography”, “cap-
• illary electrophoresis”, “ICP-MS”, “AFS”, and “AAS”, as well as sensor-based methodologies
• (ii) the analytical approach was based on chromatographic techniques (including HPLC
• and non-HPLC methods) or biosensor-based methods; and
• and evaluated: analytical technique, food matrix, sample preparation and extraction pro-
• approach employed, comprising chromatographic techniques (e.g., HPLC, GC, and related
• 3.2. Sample Preparation for the Mercury Speciation in Seafood Samples Prior to
• Sample preparation emerges as the most critical determinant of analytical reliability in

Implications

This page makes the source discoverable for category-level evidence routing. Values remain source-native and should be used only with the stated matrix, species, basis, geography, and censoring context from the paper. The page does not convert total mercury to methylmercury or use total arsenic as inorganic arsenic.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• Canned seafood (with tin flag)
• Fish — marine, predatory (tuna, swordfish, shark, king mackerel)
• Fish — marine, non-predatory (sardines, anchovies, salmon, cod)
• Shellfish (shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, oysters, mussels)
• Seaweed/kelp foods (nori, wakame, kombu, dulse — as food products)
• Mercury
• Mercury
• Cadmium
• Arsenic

Verification notes

• Identity check: DOI, raw handle, candidate cite-key, and SHA-256 were compared against existing wiki/sources/ pages before creation.
• Full-PDF read: pdftotext -layout was run on the full PDF twice; extracted text hashes matched before the page was written.
• Numeric verification: numeric/table-bearing lines were selected mechanically from the verified extraction and preserved without unit conversion or rounding.
• Brand firewall: the worker skips PDFs when extracted numeric lines appear brand/manufacturer-sensitive; this page contains category-level or species-level evidence only.
• HMTc firewall: no threshold, percentile, pass/fail, clean/dirty, or certification math is stated.

Update history

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