Mercury intake via consumption of imported Atlantic mackerel

Overview

This source page is a mechanical bulk-ingest record for a PDF in the research-pulls corpus. It preserves source-level identity, routeable product/analyte scope, and exact extracted numeric lines for later human or fresh-context audit. It does not derive HMTc thresholds, percentiles, or brand-by-brand comparisons.

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:

Atlantic mackerel ranged between 0.045 to 0.065 mg/kg. The mercury levels were well below the limit value of 1.00
mg/kg wet weight (EC, 2006; Turkish Food Codex, 2011) for fish such as mackerel. The potential human health risks
the years due to pollution and environmental factors; moni- and Region V=Beyoglu) of Istanbul (Fig 1). Sampling (n=15)
the certified reference material (fish muscle (Catalogue No. where RFD is for methylmercury 1.0 × 10-4 mg/kg/day (ATS-
In Turkey, weekly fish consumption (WFC) amounts for 1. The mean concentrations of Hg were 0.056 ±0.01, 0.063
ies Statistics, 2018). C is the mean concentration of Hg (µg/g) Region I, II, III, IV, V, respectively (Fig 2). EWI and PTWI
and BW is the average body weight. The provisional tolerable values for adults and children were presented in Table 2 while
children and adult body weights. Then, the percent PTWI was Table 3.
Table 1. Observed and certified values (mg/kg) of mercury concentrations in standard reference material (dry weight) (n=3)
between Hg concentrations of fish, obtained from different ranged between 0.039–0.068 mg/kg (mean 0.052 mg/kg). In
Hg in fish is 0.50 mg/kg, but this limit is 1.00 mg/kg for the limit (1.00 mg/kg) for canned mackerel. The value of Hg in
2011). The highest mean concentration of Hg was found as ket of Korea was found to be 0.08 mg/kg (Bae et al., 2011).
0.063 mg/kg for Region II (Figure 2), and the mercury con- Likewise, total Hg content in mackerel from Malaysia (Hajeb
1.00 mg/kg wet weight. Tuzen (2009) reported Hg concentra- Croatia (Juresa and Blanusa, 2003) reported below 1 mg/kg.
tion in Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) as 0.06 mg/kg. These results are similar to our findings. However, Abubakar
Hg for Atlantic mackerel samples below 1 mg/kg. Łuczyńska scombrus above the permitted limits and suggested periodical
Figure 2. Mean concentrations of Hg (mg/kg wet weight) in Atlantic mackerel samples of different regions.
and compared with EWI values (Table 3). week/kg) were proposed as 1.6 for Hg (EFSA, 2012). In this
study were ranged between 0.07- 0.10 µg/kg bw/week for ered as 70 and 14.5 kg, respectively. The results indicated that
adults, and 0.16- 0.22 µg/kg bw/week for the children. Even the EWIs of total mercury were below the respective PTWI
when the percent PTWI is above 100 % (Mol et al., 2019). So, metal in some shark species. However, they emphasized the
Table 3. Estimated Target Hazard Quotients (THQs) and cancer risk (CRlim) for Hg caused by consuming Atlantic mackerel for
children (Table 3). It shows that exposure to Hg via imported and Tano River basins in South Western Ghana, and estimated
and children for all regions (Table 3). The standard portion (CRmw, THQ), but THQS values were so high than our results,
the Text, Figures, and Tables are original and that they have not ditives & Contaminants: Part A, 32 (8), 1277–1286.
of Food Composition and Analysis, 14, 461-467. Tables, November 2018. Retrieved from https://
Kristinsson, H. G. and Arason, S. (2016). I n - neric-tables

Methods (brief)

determined following US EPA Method 7473 (2007) using a direct mercury analyzer (DMA-1). Mercury level of the
fish (1990-2012), prepared by FDA (2017), Northern Atlantic Samples
mackerel contains low levels of Hg. However, this list was pre- Atlantic mackerel samples were obtained from local fish
Atlantic mackerel is a pelagic carnivorous fish (Luna, 2019). These samples were produced in Norway and the production
Figure 1. The locations of sampled local fish markets.
lengths of samples were 32 ±1.32; 31.43 ±0.12; 31.50 ±0.50; will experience health risks (Pazi et al., 2017). In this study,
EPA Method 7473 (2007) using a direct mercury analyzer (EFr x ED x FIR x C) / (RFD x WAB x TA)) x 10-3,
(DMA-1; Milestone SRL, Sarisole BG, Italy). The method is where EFr is the exposure frequency (350 days/year); ED
based on the thermal decomposition of sample, mercury amal- is exposure duration, total (70 years for adults; 6 years for chil-
gamation and atomic absorption detection. Each fish sample dren); FIR is the food ingestion rate (15.07 and 7.14 g/person/
placed into the auto injector. The samples were heated with ox-
using DMA-1 PC software. The operating times in the study
ple was less than 10 minutes. The DMA-1 was calibrated using CRlim = RFD x BW/ Cm
centrations of all samples were well below the limit value of et al. 2010), Italy (Plessi et al., 2001; Storelli et al., 1998), and
Hg for Atlantic mackerel samples below 1 mg/kg. Łuczyńska scombrus above the permitted limits and suggested periodical
Figure 2. Mean concentrations of Hg (mg/kg wet weight) in Atlantic mackerel samples of different regions.
on, sardines and herrings) marketed in Georgia shellﬁsh samples. Risk assessment for the c o n -
review, 5p. Karaaslan, Y., Gucver, S. M., Koc Orhon, A.,

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

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

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and 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	Change	Description
b01ec52c	2026-08-04	major	2 sections added
d49e450f	2026-08-03	major	5 sections added; narrative text revised