Overview
Falandysz and colleagues measured total mercury in traditionally foraged edible and medicinal fungi from Yunnan province, China, and compared low-mercury wood-decaying medicinal species with higher-mercury soft-flesh edible Boletaceae and related mushrooms. The study is occurrence evidence for total mercury in wild mushrooms, medicinal mushroom materials, and mushroom-derived capsule exposure scenarios; it does not report methylmercury concentrations in the occurrence table.
Key numbers
The abstract reports 42 fungal species collected during 2011-2017. Polypore fungi were usually below 0.1 mg/kg dry weight, while two higher polypore values were 0.11 +/- 0.01 mg/kg dw in Ganoderma applanatum and 0.24 +/- 0.00 mg/kg dw in Amauroderma niger, both from the Nujiang/Lanping area.
Table 1 reports mercury in caps, stipes, or whole fruiting bodies. Selected high and low values include:
| Species / group | Site or sample note | Hg result |
|---|---|---|
Lentinula edodes cultivated sample | Longyang, Baoshan; 100 fruiting bodies | whole fruiting bodies 0.015 mg/kg dw |
Ganoderma kunmingense | Xiaoshao, Kunming | whole fruiting bodies 0.012 +/- 0.002 mg/kg dw |
Amauroderma niger | Lanping, Nujiang | whole fruiting bodies 0.24 +/- 0.00 mg/kg dw |
Baorangia bicolor | Luohe, Yuxi | caps 8.6 +/- 0.4 mg/kg dw; whole fruiting bodies 6.1 mg/kg dw |
Boletus bainiugan | Donggua, Chuxiong | caps 14 +/- 0 mg/kg dw; stipes 6.0 +/- 0.2 mg/kg dw; whole fruiting bodies 10 mg/kg dw |
Butyriboletus subsplendidus | Longyang, Baoshan | caps 12 +/- 1 mg/kg dw; whole fruiting bodies 8.6 mg/kg dw |
Caloboletus calopus | Luohe, Yuxi | caps 9.8 +/- 0.3 mg/kg dw; whole fruiting bodies 9.1 mg/kg dw |
Xerocomus sp. | Luohe, Yuxi | caps 6.8 +/- 0.3 mg/kg dw; whole fruiting bodies 6.1 mg/kg dw |
The results section states that many Boletaceae-family species had mercury concentrations from one to three orders of magnitude higher than the wood-decaying species. Several high-cap examples were B. bicolor up to 8.6 +/- 0.4 mg/kg dw, B. bainiugan up to 14 +/- 0 mg/kg dw, B. speciosus up to 6.4 +/- 0.1 mg/kg dw, B. subsplendidus up to 12 +/- 1 mg/kg dw, C. calopus up to 9.8 +/- 0.3 mg/kg dw, T. felleus up to 7.2 +/- 0.4 mg/kg dw, and Xerocomus sp. up to 6.8 +/- 0.3 mg/kg dw.
For exposure scenarios, the authors assumed 3 x 0.5 g of capsulated dried product per person per day and meal sizes of 100 to 300 g, with a maximum 500 g, for Boletaceae mushrooms. Worst-case estimates were 0.006 micrograms/kg body mass per day for hard polypore products and 0.25 micrograms/kg body mass per day for soft-flesh Boletaceae capsule products. For meals, estimated intakes were 17, 50, and 83 micrograms/kg body mass, corresponding on a weekly basis to 120, 350, and 580 micrograms/kg body mass.
Methods (brief)
The authors collected wild mushroom species from 23 sites in Yunnan and analyzed whole fruiting bodies or separated caps and stipes depending on species. Samples were cleaned, dried at 65 degrees C to constant mass, ground, sieved, and stored dry. Forest topsoil profiles were collected at Zhenyuan in 2015 and at Changning and Dulong in 2016. Mercury was reported as total mercury (Hg) on a dry-weight basis.
Related evidence
- Wild Mushrooms
- Mushrooms — cultivated (button, cremini, portobello, oyster)
- Dietary Supplements
- Ingredient class — botanicals/herbs/traditional formulas
- Oral solids: capsules
- Mushrooms
- Wild Mushrooms
- Herbal botanicals
- Mercury, Total
- Mercury
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.