Keywords: Meat, Heavy metal, Toxic elements, Health risk, Exposure assessment

Overview

This source page is a mechanical bulk-ingest record for a PDF in the methylmercury infant-formula research pull. 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:

License:   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Version of Record: A version of this preprint was published at Scientific Reports on February 25th, 2022.
Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, and Pb in 1066 fresh meat samples including pork, beef, mutton, chicken and duck from
Zhejiang province, southeast China. The average levels of As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, and Pb were 0.018, 0.002,
0.061, 0.801, 0.0038, 0.055, and 0.029 mg/kg wet weight respectively. There are significant positive
correlations among Cd, Hg and Pb (P<0.05) and negative correlations for Cu-Pb or Cu-Cd (P<0.05). The
Based on Statistical Yearbook of China 2016, Chinese output of pork, beef and mutton had reached 86.25
million tones 1. It has become the main pork producer, which accounts about 50% of the world’s
production 2. Although the majority of Chinese residents still keep a plant-food-based dietary pattern,
consumption of animal-derived foods has been increasing 3. Recently, concern has been raised about
and ore mining 4, 5. When toxic elements, such as cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) were released into water,
feeds 6–8. For example, Tao et al. 9 reported that the incidence rates of Cd, mecury (Hg), chromium (Cr),
commonly contaminated with Cr, followed by As, Cd, and Hg. Wang et al. 10 observed high level of Cr in
nerve damage, nephropathy and cancers 11–13. For example, Pb can lead to diseases of kidney failure,
cardiovascular disease and nerve development of children 14. Chronic exposure of Cd can cause liver
harm, bone degeneration, blood damage, and renal dysfunction 15. Hg could damage the nervous system
of unborn and newborn children 16. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor and control toxic elements in
seaweeds from Zhejiang 6, 11, 19–21. However, to our knowledge, few studies on metal contamination in
Total 1066 meat samples were collected in Zhejiang, China whose latitudes range from 27° 09’ to 31° 11’
collected in 11 sampling areas as shown in Fig. 1 which was drawn by software of MapGIS K9 SP2 free
trial edition (Zondy Cyber Comp., China, http://www.mapgis.com/index.php/index-view-aid-280.html).
(511), beef (184), mutton (47), chicken (250) and duck (74) collected from 2018 to 2020. All samples
transported in plastic bags were refrigerated at -20 °C until later analysis in the laboratory. The storage
period was not more than 7 days.
analysis method of GB 5009.268-2016 22. Briefly, samples (0.5-1.0 g) were digested in acid-clean Teflon
vessels containing 6 mL HNO3 in a Mars-6 microwave digestion system (CEM, Charlotte, NC, USA). The
samples in closed vessels were heated at 190 °C for 20 min. After digestion, the residue was heated at
150 °C till nearly dry. For the Hg test, the digested sample was directly diluted without heating for remove
residual acid. Then, it was diluted to 20 mL by ionized water for instrumental analysis. As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg,
Ni, and Pb in all samples were tested using NexION 300 ICP-MS (Perkin Elmer, Inc., Shelton, CT USA). For
using the same digestion and analytical methods. Two CRMs (Table 1) were purchased from National
10% of the certified value) were obtained for targeted elements of CRMs. Limits of detection (LODs) were
defined as 3 times the standard deviation of 10 runs of blank measurements. LODs of As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg,
Ni, and Pb were 0.003, 0.001, 0.005, 0.005, 0.0003, 0.004 and 0.004 mg/kg respectively.
The meat consumption data were provided by the Zhejiang Food and Drug Administration of China 23.
areas were questioned twice about their last 24-h consumption. Furthermore, the selection of interviewed
proportion of data below the LOD is not more than 60% 24.
US EPA’s IRIS database 25. We adopted the mean and 97.5th percentile (P97.5) of obtained element level
to represent the consumers with normal and high exposure, respectively 26. The sum of all THQs for each
Ci is the average or P97.5 concentration of the element in meat samples (mg/kg wet weight); Di is the
were calculated by sum of the THQ. When HI < 1, no health risk is expected to occur; If HI ≥ 1, there is
Data analysis and statistical analysis were performed using Excel (2017 edition) and SPSS16 (Tried

Methods (brief)

Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, and Pb in 1066 fresh meat samples including pork, beef, mutton, chicken and duck from
Total 1066 meat samples were collected in Zhejiang, China whose latitudes range from 27° 09’ to 31° 11’
collected in 11 sampling areas as shown in Fig. 1 which was drawn by software of MapGIS K9 SP2 free
The detailed edible parts such as leg, chest and waist were randomly selected. The samples were pork
(511), beef (184), mutton (47), chicken (250) and duck (74) collected from 2018 to 2020. All samples
analysis method of GB 5009.268-2016 22. Briefly, samples (0.5-1.0 g) were digested in acid-clean Teflon
vessels containing 6 mL HNO3 in a Mars-6 microwave digestion system (CEM, Charlotte, NC, USA). The
samples in closed vessels were heated at 190 °C for 20 min. After digestion, the residue was heated at
150 °C till nearly dry. For the Hg test, the digested sample was directly diluted without heating for remove
Ni, and Pb in all samples were tested using NexION 300 ICP-MS (Perkin Elmer, Inc., Shelton, CT USA). For
quality assurance and quality control purposes, sample blanks, certified reference materials (CRMs), and
duplicates of the samples (10% of the load) were applied in each batch of treated samples.
using the same digestion and analytical methods. Two CRMs (Table 1) were purchased from National
10% of the certified value) were obtained for targeted elements of CRMs. Limits of detection (LODs) were
defined as 3 times the standard deviation of 10 runs of blank measurements. LODs of As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg,
issued by WHO, half of LOD was assigned to all results of element levels below the LOD, where the
proportion of data below the LOD is not more than 60% 24.
Ci is the average or P97.5 concentration of the element in meat samples (mg/kg wet weight); Di is the

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.

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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
3171d06	2026-08-02	major	1 section added
bc84bfc	2026-08-02	major	6 sections added; narrative text revised