Bhoyroo et al. 2015 - Scombrid Heavy Metals in Mauritius
Bhoyroo et al. measured zinc, copper, nickel, chromium, lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic in muscle tissue from four commercially important pelagic fish species in Mauritius: yellowfin tuna, dogtooth tuna, marlin, and dorado. The paper is directly relevant to marlin and broader marine predatory fish occurrence context. It is not infant-food evidence; the wishlist hit came from the target-cell term “marlin” rather than infant or cereal matrices.
Key numbers
The article reports concentrations on a wet-weight basis for summer and winter catches. Several results are given as seasonal/species ranges rather than full sample-level tables in the extractable text.
| Finding | Source-reported value |
|---|---|
| Matrices | Muscle tissue from yellowfin tuna, dogtooth tuna, marlin, and dorado |
| Methods | AAS after digestion; Cd, Pb, and As converted from ppb to ppm; Hg by flameless AAS/hydride method |
| Nickel | 0.2-0.9 mg/kg wet weight across the four fish species; dorado in summer reached 0.89 mg/kg wet weight |
| Chromium | Marlin in summer 1.7 mg/kg wet weight; dorado in summer 2.5 mg/kg wet weight; both above the cited 1.0 mg/kg international comparator |
| Cadmium | Not detected at ppm levels in the four fish species |
| Lead | Summer-season values for the four fish species reported as 3.60-5.44 mg/kg wet weight, above the cited WHO 2.0 mg/kg comparator |
| Mercury | Reported below the cited local and international fish limits; text gives 0.02-0.71 ppm and also describes an international-comparison range around 0.03-0.1 mg/kg wet weight |
| Total arsenic | Low total/unspecified arsenic; text reports 0.002-0.03 ppm after conversion and also 0.03-0.07 mg/kg wet weight for international comparison |
The strongest routeable findings for the marlin gap are the summer marlin chromium result, the high summer lead range covering the studied fish species, and the cadmium non-detect statement. Nickel and total arsenic are useful broader marine-fish context but less specific to marlin in the extractable text.
Methods (brief)
The authors analyzed edible muscle tissue from four fish species caught in winter and summer seasons. Zinc, copper, nickel, and chromium were measured by flame atomic absorption spectroscopy. Cadmium, lead, arsenic, and mercury were detected at ppb levels and converted to ppm or mg/kg wet-weight reporting for interpretation against Mauritian Food Act and WHO/FAO comparators.
Implications
This source can support seafood, fresh fish, and marine predatory fish pages, especially for Mauritius-market or Mauritius-catch context. The marlin-specific chromium finding is directly useful for the marlin ingredient row; the lead finding should be treated as seasonal four-species evidence unless a later audit recovers the figure/table values by species.
For standards work, the data should remain wet-weight, jurisdiction-specific, and season-aware. Total arsenic is not inorganic arsenic, total mercury is not methylmercury, and total chromium is not Cr(VI). The paper is summary-level occurrence evidence rather than a complete sample-level benchmark distribution.
Wiki pages this source may touch
Verification notes
- Batch 4 auto-fetched ingest, 2026-05-25. The canonical PDF came from the marlin cadmium wishlist row; marlin nickel, lead, total-arsenic, and total-mercury files for the same DOI were rolled up to this source page.
- Paper-internal reporting is not perfectly harmonized for mercury and arsenic ranges in the text layer. Routeable structured values below prefer the clearer table/text statements for lead, chromium, nickel, and cadmium; mercury and arsenic are retained as context until a deeper audit can inspect the rendered figures/tables.
- Speciation: arsenic, mercury, and chromium are total/unspecified measurements; do not treat them as iAs, MeHg, or Cr(VI).
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.