Gutierrez-Ravelo et al. 2020 - Metals in Sarpa salpa from Tenerife

Gutierrez-Ravelo and colleagues measured toxic metals and trace elements in muscle and liver tissue of Sarpa salpa collected around Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The study reports fish-muscle occurrence values separately from fish-liver values, with liver showing higher Cd, Pb, Al, Cu, Fe, and Zn than muscle. It does not report mercury or arsenic.

Key numbers

Table 3 reports mean concentrations in mg/kg wet weight:

The paper reports these zone-level highlights from Table 4 and the discussion:

Table 6 estimates intake for 100 g/day consumption of Sarpa salpa tissue:

The source states that 100 g/day of muscle tissue did not pose a health risk under its exposure assumptions, while 100 g/day of liver tissue exceeded the cited guide values for Cd and Pb.

Methods (brief)

The authors collected ten Sarpa salpa specimens from each of three Tenerife coastal zones. Muscle with skin from the mid-dorsal area and whole liver were analyzed separately. Samples were dried at 70 +/- 10 deg C for 24 h, digested with 65% nitric acid, ashed at 420 +/- 20 deg C for 24 h, reconstituted with nitric acid and Milli-Q water, and analyzed by ICP-OES. Quality control used NIST SRM 1548a typical diet, SRM 1515 apple leaves, and SRM 1567a wheat flour; reported recoveries were generally about 98%-103%.

Implications

This source contributes Tenerife/Canary Islands occurrence data for a marine non-predatory fish species, with a clear distinction between fish muscle and liver. For product routing, the muscle values are the best fit for fresh-fish occurrence. The liver values are important seafood organ-meat context but should not be silently substituted for ordinary fish-muscle concentrations.

Verification notes

• PDF text extracted with pdftotext -layout; title page, sampling section, methods, Tables 2-6, discussion, conclusions, and license text were readable.
• DOI 10.3390/ijerph17197212, raw handle MFK_10-3390-ijerph17197212, and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• Table 3 tissue means, selected Table 4 zone highlights, and Table 6 exposure rows were checked against the extracted text. Units are preserved as mg/kg wet weight for concentration values; no conversion was performed.
• Speciation: chromium is total Cr, not Cr-VI. Mercury and arsenic were not analyzed.
• Brand firewall: source specimens came from fishermen’s organizations/coastal zones, not consumer brands.
• Frontmatter slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md; no new product or ingredient slug was invented. There is no closed product slug for fish liver/organ meat in the current snapshot, so liver is represented with [[ingredients/organ-meats]] and documented in the body.

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.