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Heavy Metal Index

Improving the Efficiency of Organoarsenic Extraction from Seaweeds

Source

Hata and colleagues developed an enzymatic plus methanol extraction method for organoarsenic species in wakame.

Page snapshot
Cited by4 pages
Metals measured1
Evidence tierB
Year2014

Overview

Hata and colleagues developed an enzymatic plus methanol extraction method for organoarsenic species in wakame. The occurrence-relevant material is a single commercial dry wakame product from Japan; the rest of the paper tests extraction efficiency and speciation preservation. The source reports total arsenic in the dry wakame and method-dependent extractable arsenic peaks, but it does not report measured inorganic arsenic.

Key numbers

All product concentrations are reported by the source on a dry-wakame basis.

MatrixResultSource-reported value
Commercial dry wakameTotal arsenic25.50 ± 1.05 mg/kg dry weight (mean ± SD, n = 3)
Wakame, alginate lyase + cellulase plus 100% MeOH extractionOverall arsenic extraction rate88.8 ± 8.4% (n = 3, mean ± SD)
Wakame, alginate lyase + cellulase pre-treatment supernatantArsenic elution rate45.5 ± 2.2% (n = 5, mean ± SD)

Enzymatic pre-treatment elution rates from Table 2:

TreatmentElution rate
A(-)C(-), no alginate lyase and no cellulase17.2 ± 3.7%
A(-)C(+), cellulase only22.6 ± 0.6%
A(+)C(-), alginate lyase only31.2 ± 0.7%
A(+)C(+), alginate lyase + cellulase45.5 ± 2.2%

Extraction rates from Table 3:

MeOH concentrationA(-)C(-) extraction rateA(+)C(+) extraction rate
0%22.5 ± 1.1%48.3 ± 0.5%
50%21.8 ± 0.9%58.7 ± 4.1%
100%28.1 ± 0.2%88.8 ± 8.4%

Arsenic species/peak contents in wakame extracts from Table 4, reported as mg/kg dry wakame:

Extraction conditionPeak aPeak b (AsSug 482)Peak cAsSug 328Sum
A(-)C(-), 0% MeOH0.681.320.571.514.07
A(-)C(-), 100% MeOH4.531.380.631.437.97
A(+)C(+), 0% MeOH5.095.940.611.5713.22
A(+)C(+), 100% MeOH10.465.480.611.4918.04

The authors identified AsSug 328 and AsSug 482 in the wakame extracts. Peak a was estimated to correspond to arsenic-hydrocarbon 388 (C21H46OAs in the results text) and arsenic-phospholipid 1012 (C49H95O14PAs in the results text); peak c was not identified. Neither AsSug 254 nor DMA was detected in this study, which the authors used as evidence that the enzymatic method did not alter the arsenic-compound composition.

Methods (brief)

A commercial dry wakame product, harvested from the Sanriku Coast and purchased from a retail market in Choshi City, was ground to powder before analysis. Total arsenic was measured by ICP-MS after microwave acid digestion of 100 mg powdered sample with 2.5 mL of HNO3:H2O2 = 5:2 and dilution to 30 mL with 5% HNO3. The total-As method was validated with NMIJ CRM 7405-a Hijiki: certified 35.8 ± 0.9 mg/kg, measured 35.5 ± 0.4 mg/kg (mean ± SD, n = 3).

For extraction testing, 100 mg dry wakame was incubated for 6 hours at 37 °C with alginate lyase, cellulase, both enzymes, or no enzyme in 0.1 M phosphate buffer (pH 6.0). Methanol extraction was then tested at 0, 50, and 100% MeOH. Arsenic species/peaks were separated by cation- and anion-exchange HPLC-ICP-MS and identified or tentatively assigned with HPLC-ESI-Q-TOF-MS.

Implications

This source should be treated as a narrow method-plus-occurrence record for dry wakame. It supports the seaweed/kelp food row by adding a Japanese retail dry-wakame total-arsenic value and showing that extraction conditions strongly affect the recovered organoarsenic profile. Because inorganic arsenic was not reported, this page should not be used as an inorganic-arsenic occurrence value.

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Verification notes

  • Identity checks before writing found no existing source page for DOI 10.14252/foodsafetyfscj.2014037, raw handle MFK_hata2014, title text, or cite key hata2014-wakame-organoarsenic-extraction.
  • All Key numbers were rechecked against /tmp/hmi-seaweed-034.txt, extracted with pdftotext -layout. Tables 2, 3, and 4 were copied directly; the total-arsenic value is from Results section 3-1.
  • Units and bases are preserved as mg/kg dry weight, mg/kg dry wakame, and %; no unit conversion was performed.
  • Speciation check: the source reports total arsenic and organoarsenic/arsenosugar peaks. It does not report inorganic arsenic, so frontmatter uses metals: [tAs] only and no AsSug/DMA value is promoted to iAs.
  • Brand firewall: the source does not identify a consumer brand; the page records only the retail-market dry wakame category and source-described harvest/geographic context.
  • Missing-slug check: no missing product or ingredient slug blockers. Exact wakame is retained in source text while frontmatter uses broad seaweed/kelp food slugs.

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.

CommitDateChangeDescription
b01ec52c32026-08-04major1 section added
3171d069e2026-08-02major1 section added
90a2f9a382026-07-30major1 section added and 1 removed; narrative text revised
eaa8eeeed2026-07-27major1 section added
50de6ab212026-07-27minorNarrative text revised