Ho 2014 - Organotins in Hong Kong seafood

Ho and Leung measured six organotin residues in 11 commonly available Hong Kong seafood species and assessed non-cancer risk from seafood consumption. The study reports mono-, di-, and tributyltin and mono-, di-, and triphenyltin separately, with triphenyltin dominating the total organotin burden. These are organotin occurrence values in fish and shellfish, not total tin or inorganic tin.

Key numbers

The study covered 11 seafood species: three gastropods, two bivalves, and six fish species. Five replicates per species were analyzed for organotin concentrations; gastropod and bivalve replicates each pooled 4-8 individuals.

The abstract reports that tongue sole (Paraplagusia blochii) had the highest total organotin concentration. Triphenyltin (TPT) accounted for 56-97% of total organotins, and the highest TPT hazard quotient was 1.41 in P. blochii.

Figure 1 and the Results text report tissue concentrations as µg kg−1 dry weight. Among gastropods, Babylonia areolata had the highest total organotins and TPT, at 1751.4 µg kg−1 dw and 1695.0 µg kg−1 dw, respectively.

Among fish, P. blochii had the highest total organotins and TPT, at 2325.8 µg kg−1 dw and 2237.7 µg kg−1 dw, respectively. Total organotins in the other five fish species ranged from 957.7 to 1346.5 µg kg−1 dw, and TPT ranged from 905.7 to 1217.4 µg kg−1 dw.

TBT was higher in Collichthys lucidus and Harpadon nehereus than in the other fish species. Their TBT concentrations were 62.9 µg kg−1 dw and 105.3 µg kg−1 dw, respectively; TBT in the other fish species ranged from 18.3 to 43.0 µg kg−1 dw.

Across the 11 species, TPT ranged from 75.5 µg kg−1 dw in Hemifusus tuba to 2237.7 µg kg−1 dw in P. blochii, accounting for 55.5-96.8% of total organotins. TBT ranked second and represented 0.6-18.6% of total organotins. TPT/TBT ratios were greater than 1 in all species.

Butyltin degradation indices (([MBT] + [DBT])/[TBT]) ranged from 0.16 to 3.29. Phenyltin degradation indices (([MPT] + [DPT])/[TPT]) were below 0.27 for all species.

Table 1 reports Hong Kong seafood consumption inputs used for exposure calculations. CFS 2010 consumption rates were total seafood 70.78 g d−1, molluscs 5.95 g d−1, and fish 57.48 g d−1. FAO 2012 food-fish supply values were total 65.9 kg yr−1 (ca. 180.5 g d−1), molluscs 19.1 kg yr−1 (ca. 52.3 g d−1), and fish 32.1 kg yr−1 (ca. 87.9 g d−1).

The health-risk section states that mean and maximum HQs for TBT and TBT + DBT were below 1 for all species. The maximum HQ for TPT exceeded 1 in P. blochii (1.30) using CFS 2010 consumption. Using FAO 2012 consumption, maximum HQs for TPT exceeded 1 in P. blochii (2.00), Nibea albiflora (1.24), and B. areolata (1.05). Only P. blochii had mean HQ for TPT greater than 1, at 1.41.

For tolerable-average-residue-level comparison, the paper reports that all molluscs had TPT concentrations lower than TARLs, while in fish only P. blochii had average TPT of 480.3 µg kg−1 wet weight, significantly higher than the FAO-derived TPT TARL of 341.1 µg kg−1.

Method performance reported a certified-reference-material recovery of 82-92%, surrogate-standard average recovery of 71% with range 45-102%, and limits of detection from 0.2 to 1.5 µg kg−1 dw for the six organotin compounds.

Methods (brief)

The authors measured MBT, DBT, TBT, MPT, DPT, and TPT in tissue from gastropods, bivalves, and marine fish. Gastropods and bivalves were purchased from two Hong Kong wet markets during the 2012 wet season; fish were collected by two commercial shrimp trawlers operating in western and southern Hong Kong waters. Organotins were analyzed by gas chromatography with a mass-selective detector after a modified published protocol; ERM-CE477 mussel tissue and di-n-heptyltin dichloride surrogate standard were used for quality checks. Dry-weight results were converted to wet weight for human-health risk calculations using species-specific dry-weight/wet-weight ratios.

Implications

This source contributes Hong Kong seafood organotin occurrence evidence for fish and shellfish. It is especially relevant to organotin tin-species routing because TPT, not TBT, dominated total organotin concentrations and drove HQ exceedances in selected fish. Downstream use should keep TPT, TBT, butyltins, phenyltins, and total organotins distinct and should not treat these values as total tin or inorganic tin.

Verification notes

• PDF text extracted with pdftotext -layout; title page, methods, Table 1, Results sections 3.1-3.3, figure captions, and conclusions were readable.
• DOI 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2013.12.039, raw handle MFK_ho2014, and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• Numeric values were checked against the extracted abstract, Table 1, and Results text. Units are preserved as µg kg−1 dry weight, µg kg−1 wet weight, g d−1, and kg yr−1; no conversion was performed.
• Speciation: the source reports organotin species (MBT, DBT, TBT, MPT, DPT, TPT), total butyltins, total phenyltins, and total organotins. This page records them as organotin tin species and does not collapse them into total elemental tin.
• Brand firewall: no sampled seafood product brands were reported; method-side vendor names are scientific-method details only.
• Frontmatter product and ingredient slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md; no new slug was invented.

Page history

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