Barchiesi 2020 - Shellfish metals in central Italy

Barchiesi and colleagues analyzed official-monitoring data for cadmium, lead, and mercury in shellfish collected along the Italian coastline from 2017 through 2019. The dataset covered bivalve mollusks, marine gastropods, and sea urchins, with N = 2207 records after data cleaning. Mercury is reported as Hg without methylmercury speciation, so this page records it as total/unspecified mercury (tHg).

Key numbers

The abstract reports that 6 samples exceeded legislation thresholds: 1 sea urchin in 2017 exceeded the Hg maximum of 0.50 mg/kg, and 5 samples exceeded the Cd maximum of 1.0 mg/kg (1 mussel in 2017 and 4 gastropods in 2018). Pb was always below the EU maximum level of 1.5 mg/kg.

Table 2 reports Cd levels in selected seafood over the three-year period as mg/kg; averages are middle-bound (MB):

Table 3 reports Hg levels in selected seafood over the three-year period as mg/kg; averages are middle-bound (MB):

Table 4 reports Pb levels in selected seafood over the three-year period as mg/kg; averages are middle-bound (MB):

Table 5 reports benefit-risk quotient (BRQ) values by metal. Gastropods were the only class with BRQ greater than 1, with Cd BRQ 3.46; the other Cd BRQs ranged from 0.12 to 0.57, Hg BRQs from 0.00 to 0.03, and Pb BRQs from 0.00 to 0.10.

Methods (brief)

Analytical results for Cd, Pb, and Hg in shellfish were retrieved from the Italian Ministry of Health SINVSA platform for samples collected from January 2017 through December 2019. Samples came from official monitoring of bivalve mollusk production areas along coasts of 12 Italian regions. Pb, Cd, and Hg were analyzed in 1 g sample portions after microwave digestion with HNO3, H2O2, and HF, then quantified by ICP-MS using m/z 206 + 207 + 208 Pb, 111 Cd, and 202 Hg. LOQs were Pb 0.015 mg/kg, Cd 0.005 mg/kg, and Hg 0.025 mg/kg; left-censored values were handled using a middle-bound substitution of half the LOQ. Mercury was not speciated as methylmercury.

Implications

This source contributes official-monitoring shellfish occurrence data for Cd, Pb, and total/unspecified Hg from Italy. The shellfish matrix includes bivalves and marine gastropods, while echinoderm/sea-urchin evidence should be treated as a missing more-specific product/ingredient row until the taxonomy supports it. The year-by-class tables are suitable for later structured extraction, with the middle-bound handling and wet-weight units preserved.

Verification notes

• PDF text extracted with pdftotext -layout; title page, methods, Tables 1-5, discussion, and conclusion were readable.
• DOI 10.3390/foods9111720, raw handle MFK_foods-09-01720, and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• Tables 2-5 were checked against the extracted text. Units are preserved as mg/kg; no conversion was performed.
• The 2019 Hg razor-clam row appeared inconsistent in extracted text (0.700 min and 0.230 max); the min is recorded as not cleanly reported instead of guessed.
• Speciation: Hg is reported as total/unspecified Hg and is recorded as tHg, not MeHg.
• Brand firewall: the source reports official monitoring by seafood class/species; no product brand values were reported.
• Missing closed-vocabulary slugs: sea urchin/echinoderm-specific ingredient and product slugs were not available in the taxonomy snapshot, so frontmatter routes through the broad shellfish row and notes the gap here.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. 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.