Selenium Status: Its Interactions with Dietary Mercury

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:

periodic table. It is classified as metalloid (semimetal) with the atomic mass of 78.96 and
Hg, with the atomic mass of 200.59, belongs to group 12 of the periodic table and
is often referred to as liquid silver (26). It has seven stable isotopes (Hg-196, Hg-198,
Table 1. Typical Selenium levels in food from selected countries.
healthy populations from selected countries are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Selenium daily intake from selected countries.
of Hg in selected foods from selected countries are shown in Table 3.
Table 3. Typical mercury levels in food from selected countries.
intakes in the range from 0.042 to 0.35 µg/kg bw/day, which is equivalent to 2.52 to
has been established that the tolerable weekly intake (TWI) for methyl Hg is set at 1.3 µg/kg
Table 4 shows a typical daily Hg intake of a healthy population from selected countries.
Table 4. Total mercury intake from selected country.
Table 5. Selenium levels in blood from selected countries.
- Values are expressed as geometric mean (GM) and range from 5% to 95% percentiles. ** Values are expressed as
geometric mean (GM) and range from 2.5% to 97.5% percentiles. *** Range values 2.5% to 97.5% percentiles.
exposure, the biomarkers of blood plasma Se levels less than 1000 µg/L and Se intakes less
Table 6. Mercury levels in blood from selected country.
- Values are expressed in geometric mean (GM) with range values in closed brackets from 25% to 95% percentiles.
the Hg level in whole blood has been reported to reach 30.6 µg/L after consumption of fish
and seafood (106). High blood Hg levels (range: 0.01–241 µg/L) have also been reported in
fish consumption, where the total Hg levels in plasma ranged from 2.4 to 27.3 µg/L, and
8.4 to 83.2 µg/L for whole blood (102). A long-term fish and shellfish intake increased the
blood Hg to 17 µg/L in young children and it has been reported to cause a reduction in
(total Hg) and toxicity (153). High values of Se:Hg molar ratios (range: 5–625) for Se and
150 g (Orange Roughy fish) per week or 150 g of shark flake per fortnight (160). In the USA,
1. Jain, R.B.; Choi, Y.S. Normal reference ranges for and variability in the levels of blood manganese and selenium by gender, age,

Methods (brief)

1. Tinggi, U. Determination of selenium in meat products by hydride generation atomic absorption spectrophotometry. J. AOAC Int.
1. Cabanero, A.I.; Madrid, Y.; Camara, C. Mercury-selenium species ratio in representative fish samples and their bioaccessibility by
an in vitro digestion method. Biol. Trace Elem. Res. 2007, 119, 195–211. (CrossRef)
using HPLC-ICP-MS. Microchem. J. 2016, 128, 248–257. (CrossRef)
1. Sogame, Y.; Tsukagoshi, A. Development of a liquid chromatography-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry method for
elements in whole blood from inhabitants of Cotonou (Benin) by ICP-MS. J. Trace Elem. Med. Biol. 2017, 43, 38–45. (CrossRef)
Manojlovic, D. Reference values for trace essential elements in the whole blood and serum samples of the adult Serbian
Wuhan of China by ICP-MS. Biol. Trace Elem. Res. 2019, 189, 344–353. (CrossRef)
SEC-UV-ICP-MS and HPLC-ESI-MS/MS. Talanta 2022, 237, 122922. (CrossRef) (PubMed)
1. Aaseth, J.; Wallace, D.R.; Vejrup, K.; Alexander, J. Methylmercury and developmental neurotoxicity: A global concern. Curr. Opin.
1. Bjorklund, G.; Aaseth, J.; Ajsuvakova, O.P.; Nikonorov, A.A.; Skalny, A.V.; Skalnaya, M.G.; Tinkov, A.A. Molecular interaction
1. Skalny, A.V.; Aschner, M.; Sekacheva, M.I.; Santamaria, A.; Barbosa, F.; Ferrer, B.; Aaseth, J.; Paoliello, M.M.B.; Rocha, J.B.T.;
the distribution patterns in mice organs with LA-ICP-MS imaging. Anal. Chim. Acta 2021, 1182, 338941. (CrossRef)

Implications

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Verification notes

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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