Organotin contamination in commercial and wild oysters from China: Increasing occurrence of triphenyltin

Overview

Chen and colleagues measured six organotin compounds in commercial and wild oysters from China: MBT, DBT, TBT, MPhT, DPhT, and TPhT. The paper reports commercial oyster samples from Shanghai markets and wild oyster samples from fourteen coastal cities. These are organometallic tin species reported as ng Sn g−1 dw; they are not total inorganic tin measurements.

Key numbers

The abstract reports total organotins in commercial oysters ranging from 251 to 1949 ng Sn g−1 dw (dry weight) and total organotins in wild oysters ranging from 33.3 to 2671 ng Sn g−1 dw. The same abstract states that commercial-oyster TBT and TPhT reached 68.1 ± 20.1 ng Sn g−1 dw and 747 ± 7.3 ng Sn g−1 dw, respectively.

Table 1 reports organotin concentrations in commercial oysters from Shanghai seafood markets as ng Sn g−1 dw:

Table 2 reports organotin concentrations in wild oysters from China’s coastline as ng Sn g−1 dw:

The results text reports commercial-oyster phenyltins in all samples and states that phenyltins contributed over 76% of total organotins. For wild oysters, butyltin concentrations did not differ significantly between northern and southern coastal zones (p > 0.05), while phenyltin levels were significantly greater in the south at 436-2564 ng Sn g−1 dw than in the north at 18.8-59.1 ng Sn g−1 dw (p < 0.05).

Methods (brief)

Commercial oysters were purchased from Shanghai seafood markets in November 2014, and wild oysters were collected from fourteen coastal Chinese cities in March 2015. More than 20 individuals per sample were purchased or collected, edible tissues were freeze-dried, ground, homogenized, and stored at −20 °C. Six organotins were extracted from 0.5 g freeze-dried oyster powder using acetic-acid/methanol with tropolone, purified, derivatized with NaBEt4, and measured by GC-MS. The method used tripropyltin as internal standard, ERM-CE477 for butyltin validation, spiked blank oysters for recovery, and reports LODs <4 ng Sn·g−1 dw for all target analytes.

Implications

This source contributes shellfish occurrence evidence for organotin tin species in oysters from China. The source is directly routeable to the shellfish product row as organotin context, with TBT/DBT/MBT and TPhT/DPhT/MPhT retained as separate species rather than collapsed into total tin (Sn). The dry-weight basis and oyster-specific matrix should be preserved for any later structured extraction or pooling decision.

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.