Kim 2023 - Heavy metals in Korean fishery products

Kim, Jeon, and Shin measured Pb, Cd, arsenic, total mercury, and methylmercury in 1186 Korean fishery-product samples. The source covers seven broad categories: sea algae, freshwater fish, marine fish, crustaceans, mollusks, tunicates, and echinoderms. Arsenic is reported as total/unspecified As in the occurrence table, while the risk section assumes inorganic arsenic for carcinogenic-risk modeling.

Key numbers

Samples were collected from January to November 2021 in six Korean regions. Table 1 reports category counts: sea algae n = 105, freshwater fish n = 87, marine fish n = 559, crustaceans n = 65, mollusks n = 320, tunicates n = 30, and echinoderms n = 20.

Table 4 reports mean, max, and min concentrations as mg/kg; standard deviations are shown in parentheses:

The discussion states that the maximum Hg content in marine fish was 2.245 mg/kg, exceeding the EU standard of 1.0 mg/kg for deep seawater and predatory fish, while the maximum Me-Hg content was 0.084 mg/kg by the standards comparison sentence and 0.322 mg/kg in Table 4. Because Table 4 is the source’s occurrence table, this page retains the Table 4 Me-Hg maximum of 0.322 mg/kg for marine fish and notes the conflicting narrative value here.

Table 2 reports LOD/LOQ values in mackerel matrix as mg/kg: Pb 0.001/0.004, Cd 0.001/0.004, As 0.002/0.005, Hg 0.001/0.003, and Me-Hg 0.003/0.010.

Table 5 reports estimated exposure. The highest EDI values for Pb, Cd, and As were in crustaceans: Pb 5.84 x 10−4 µg/kg/day, Cd 2.56 x 10−3 µg/kg/day, and As 4.23 x 10−2 µg/kg/day. Marine fish had the highest Hg and Me-Hg exposures: Hg EDI 1.57 x 10−3 µg/kg/day and Me-Hg EDI 2.68 x 10−4 µg/kg/day.

Table 6 reports HI values below 1 for all categories, ranging from 1.36 x 10−3 in freshwater fish to 1.43 x 10−1 in crustaceans. Table 7 reports Pb carcinogenic-risk values below 1 x 10−6 for all fishery-product categories and As carcinogenic-risk values from 4.22 x 10−7 in freshwater fish to 6.34 x 10−5 in crustaceans, using the source’s protective assumption that As was inorganic As.

Methods (brief)

Fishery products were purchased from grocery stores and markets in six Korean regions, non-edible parts were removed, and samples were homogenized and stored at −18 °C. Pb, Cd, and As were analyzed by ICP-MS after microwave digestion; Hg and Me-Hg were measured by DMA-80 evo direct mercury analysis. Me-Hg was analyzed only in samples where Hg was detected. The method validation reported R2 > 0.999, LODs 1.0-3.2 µg/kg, LOQs 3.1-9.6 µg/kg, accuracy 88.14-113.80%, and precision 0.07-6.02%.

Implications

This source contributes broad Korean market fishery-product occurrence data for total As, Pb, Cd, tHg, and MeHg. It is directly useful for marine fish, freshwater fish, shellfish, and seaweed/sea-algae context, but tunicates and echinoderms lack specific destination slugs in the closed taxonomy. Downstream routing should keep Table 4 total Hg and Me-Hg separate and should not treat the risk section’s inorganic-As assumption as measured iAs occurrence.

Verification notes

• PDF text extracted with pdftotext -layout; title page, Tables 1-7, methods, and discussion were readable.
• DOI 10.3390/foods12203750, raw handle MFK_foods-12-03750, and cite-key checks found no existing source page before creation.
• Table 4 occurrence values, Table 2 LOD/LOQ values, and Table 5-7 risk/exposure summaries were checked against extracted text. Units are preserved as mg/kg, µg/kg/day, µg/kg/week, and µg/kg/month; no conversion was performed.
• Speciation: arsenic is total/unspecified As (tAs), mercury is total/unspecified Hg (tHg), and methylmercury is separately reported as Me-Hg. The source’s carcinogenic-risk calculation assumes As is inorganic As, but that assumption is not a measured iAs occurrence value.
• Table 4 and the discussion conflict on the maximum marine-fish Me-Hg value (0.322 mg/kg in Table 4 versus 0.084 mg/kg in text); the table value is retained for occurrence evidence and the conflict is noted in Key numbers.
• Brand firewall: samples were grouped by fishery-product category/species and no product brand values were reported.
• Missing closed-vocabulary slugs: tunicate and echinoderm/sea-urchin-specific product and ingredient slugs were not available in the taxonomy snapshot, so those categories are documented in the body without invented frontmatter slugs.

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.