Health Risk Assessment for Human Exposure to Heavy Metals

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:

154 samples of different fruits and vegetables and 440 samples of fish were analyzed by atomic
emissions that range between 30 and 70 tons of Hg (6,7). In the Chocó department,
vegetables; (2) to determine the target hazard quotient (THQ) and total THQ to assess the
Geophagus Pellegrini, and Pimelodus sp. The non-carnivorous (110 individuals) were Prochilo-
trifida; tubers (2): Colocasia esculenta, Manihot esculenta; vegetables (9): Eryngium foetidum,
2.3. Analysis of THg, MeHg, As, Pb, and Cd in Fish Muscle, Fruits, and Vegetables
the methods used. The recovery percentage was between 92 and 96% and the detection
of dogfish muscle certificate (4.47 ± 0.32 µg g−1 ). The percent recovery for MeHg was 99%.
(Table S1). On average, the inhabitants of the middle basin of the Atrato river consume
256 g/day of fish (8). The average consumption of fruits and vegetables was established
the information provided in the surveys (Table S1). The results obtained from the analysis
CDDingestion = (4)
Pb (38); Bw is the mean body weight for each municipality; AT is the mean time for
where PTWI is the reference value of 1.6 µg/kg bw/week for women of childbearing age
and children, 3.2 µg/kg bw/week is the reference value for the adult population (34) and
were used: a threshold of 200 µg/kg ww (41) for vulnerable populations, such as children
3.1. Concentrations of Hg, Cd, Pb, As, and MeHg in Fish, Fruits, and Vegetables
rials Table S2. Based on the taxonomic identification, 19 species of fish were obtained, with
species (111 individuals). The most common species were Prochilodus magdalenae (15.9%),
Hoplias malabaricus (11.1%), Rhamdia quelen (10.0%), Hypostomus hondae (8.9%), and Astyanax
fasciatus (8.6%). The concentrations of Hg were highest, followed by those of As, Pb, and
Cd. (Table S2).
(Table S2). Of the total fish samples for Hg and MeHg, 221 individuals (piscivores 111,
vegetables; the species of vegetables with a total of 24 species were subdivided into 15 fruits
and 9 vegetables. A total of 154 individual specimens are listed in Supplementary Materials,
Table S3. Hg presented the lowest concentration in the species Citrus aurantifolia for
species with the highest mean concentration value (Figure 3a). The minimum values for As
The maximum mean concentrations of As were found in Murindó (60.84 ± 107.8 mg kg−1 )
(100 mg kg−1 ) (Figure 3c). However, the mean concentrations of Hg, Pb, Cd, and As
Cd: 0.05 mg kg−1 and As: 0.2 mg kg−1 (46) (Table S3).
3.2. Species of Fish, Fruits, and Vegetables Most Consumed in the Middle Basin of the Atrato River
inhabitants of this middle area of the basin (Table S2). Among these, two species of non-
3.3. Determination of Human Health Risk by Fish and Vegetables Consumption
are described in Supplementary Materials Table S1. A total of 57.9% (n = 446) of the
and risk levels of metals for the most consumed species (Tables 1 and 2).
3.4. Determination of Health Risk from the Consumption of Fish, Fruits, and Vegetables
vegetables studied, the EDI values were 0.0135 µg/kg/day (range: 7.882 × 10−5 –0.068) for
Hg, for As 0.0595 g/kg/day (range: 0.001–0.755), for Pb 0.0235 g/kg/day (range: 5.401–0.232)
and for Cd 0.009 g/kg/day (range: 1.322 × 10−5 –0.860). The species Musa paradisiaca presented
As (As 0.30 g/kg/day) (Table 1).
For fish, the mean EDI values were 1.374 µg/kg/day (range: 0.122–3.556) for Hg, for
As 0.119 g/kg/day (range: 0.016–0.672), for Pb 0.067 µg/kg/day (range: 0.015–0.067) and,

Methods (brief)

154 samples of different fruits and vegetables and 440 samples of fish were analyzed by atomic
absorption spectroscopy. A sample of 446 people were surveyed to evaluate food consumption and
440 individuals of 19 fish species were collected. The carnivorous species (330 individuals)
were Argeneiosus pardalis, Pimelodella chagresi, Rhamdia quelen, Trachelyopterus fisheri, Pimelo-
Caquetaia kraussii, Caquetaia kraussii, Caquetaia kraussii, and Pimelodus punctatus, Leporinus
muyscorum, Caquetaia kraussii, Ctenolucius beani, Pseudopimelodus schultzi, Sternopygus aequil-
Geophagus Pellegrini, and Pimelodus sp. The non-carnivorous (110 individuals) were Prochilo-
dus magdalenae and Hypostomus hondae. The fish samples were placed in polyethylene
at each sampling point. A total of 154 individual samples were collected and classified
Quantities of 0.02 g of freeze-dried fish and plant material samples were analyzed
for Hg concentration levels by atomic absorption spectrometry using a direct mercury
analyzer (DMA-80 TRICELL, Milestone Inc, Italy) using the established EPA Method 7473.
by Karadede and ÜnlÜ (31) were used, respectively. The samples were digested with
of each fish and plant material sample with Mg (NO3 ) 2 at 550 ◦ C in a muffle furnace, then
(Szkoda et al., 2006). A Thermo Scientific iCETM 3500 AAS atomic absorption spectrometer,
As analysis (HGAAS; standard Methods SM 31114, 2017). Certified µreference materials
for Pb, and 0.016 µg g−1 for As. MeHg analysis was only performed on the fish samples; for
L-cysteine. Finally, a 100 µL aliquot of the aqueous phase was injected into DMA (32).

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