Mititelu et al. 2019 - Heavy metals in wild edible mushrooms from Romanian urban areas
This Romanian study measured Cd, Cu, Zn, Pb, Cr, Fe, Ni, Ca, and Mg in Boletus edulis and Hymenochaete rubiginosa collected from two urban-area soils. Mushroom concentrations were higher in samples from the more contaminated soil for several metals. The highest reported mushroom Cd and Pb values were in Hymenochaete rubiginosa from soil 2.
Key numbers
All mushroom concentrations below are reported as ug/g dry weight, equivalent to mg/kg dry weight.
| Mushroom and site | Cd | Cr | Ni | Pb | Zn |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boletus edulis, soil 1 | 0.33 +/- 2.4 | 4.21 +/- 1.7 | 0.32 +/- 1.6 | 0.85 +/- 2.8 | 1.9 +/- 3.5 |
| Boletus edulis, soil 2 | 3.9 +/- 3.1 | 3.1 +/- 1.2 | 0.71 +/- 1.9 | 1.4 +/- 1.4 | 2.61 +/- 3.4 |
| Hymenochaete rubiginosa, soil 1 | 1.21 +/- 2.7 | 6.5 +/- 2.2 | 0.22 +/- 3.5 | 0.31 +/- 3.2 | 1.43 +/- 2.9 |
| Hymenochaete rubiginosa, soil 2 | 5.11 +/- 1.2 | 3.3 +/- 2.6 | 0.68 +/- 2.1 | 1.51 +/- 3.3 | 2.54 +/- 3.4 |
Soil 2 had higher soil Cd (6.1 +/- 2.8 ug/g), Ni (34.2 +/- 1.9 ug/g), Pb (35.6 +/- 3.3 ug/g), and Zn (271.4 +/- 3.5 ug/g) than soil 1 for those metals.
Methods (brief)
Mushroom and soil samples were mineralized with nitric acid and analyzed by atomic absorption spectroscopy. Wavelengths reported for metal determination include Cd 228.8 nm, Cu 324.7 nm, Zn 213.9 nm, and Pb 217 nm. The study used multivariate analysis of variance and bootstrap resampling to compare the effects of mushroom type and collection area.
Implications
Certification: This source contributes dry-weight wild-mushroom occurrence values for Pb, Cd, Cr, and Ni. It should be treated as European wild-foraged mushroom context, not as US-market cultivated mushroom evidence.
Courses: Useful example of soil contamination translating into mushroom metal differences by species and site.
App: Supports a wild-mushroom higher-risk flag, especially near urban or contaminated soils.
Wiki pages this source may touch
Verification notes
- The PDF table labels “cooper”; this page uses copper in prose but preserves the source’s numeric values.
- Units are ug/g dry weight in the source tables, equivalent to mg/kg dry weight.
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.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 4039d20 | 2026-06-10 | scope: broaden ingest to the full upstream+downstream literature (marine, atmospheric, attribution, exposure, toxicology) — inclusion is the default |