Qvarfort and Holmgren 2025 - game meat lead bioaccessibility

Qvarfort and Holmgren measured total lead and simulated gastrointestinal release of lead from metallic fragments in wild-boar tissues collected around bullet wound channels. The study is not a representative market-occurrence survey; it deliberately sampled the most contaminated wound-channel tissues so that metallic-lead dissolution could be tested. It is useful as game-meat lead-fragment bioaccessibility context, with its measured tissue lead values kept on the source’s mg/kg ww basis.

Key numbers

• Article identity: Journal of Analytical Techniques and Research 7, pages 09-22, DOI 10.26502/jatr.47; the PDF prints received December 18, 2024, accepted December 26, 2025, and published February 11, 2025.
• Object 1: male wild boar (Sus scrofa), live weight 45.5 kg, shooting distance 75 metres, calibre 6.5 -284, muzzle velocity 890 m/sec, calculated impact velocity 840 m/sec, bullet weight 9.1 grams (140grs).
• Object 2: female wild boar (Sus scrofa), live weight 72 kg, shooting distance 25 metres, calibre 6,5x55, muzzle velocity 870 m/sec, calculated impact velocity 845 m/sec, bullet weight 10.1 grams (156 grs), bullet entrance Left side, 3th rib, bullet exit Right side, 4th rib.
• Study design: samples were taken from a 9 centimeters wound-channel diameter and from a 6.5 centimeters radius around the wound-channel center, plus chest-wall, lung, and heart tissues; sample weights were 20 to 120 gram.
• CT/radiography context: the authors state that lead fragments smaller than 1/10 millimeter were observable in high magnification images and that Figure 3 showed maximum lead-fragment distance through bloodstreams in the chest cavity of 134 mm for Object 1.
• Overall source summary: total mean lead content for all samples was 273.6 mg/kg ww for n=17; the source states this high mean reflects deliberate wound-channel sampling rather than normal edible-meat sampling.
• Source-side bioaccessibility summary: the Results section states that bioaccessible lead varied between 0.13 to 2% with mean 0.98 %, but Table 4 includes one 2.38 percent value; the abstract and Summary also describe the bioaccessible part as less than 2% in most samples and report mean 0.5%.

Table 3, Object 1 wound-channel and nearby tissue samples:

Table 4, Object 2 wound-channel and nearby tissue samples:

Table 2, Object 1 gastric-versus-intestinal dissolution check:

Table 5, lead-shot-only gastrointestinal simulation:

Methods (brief)

The authors CT-scanned deep-frozen, uneviscerated wild boars in natural posture, then used CT and high-resolution radiography to locate lead fragments around the wound channel and in chest-cavity tissues. Semi-thawed samples were homogenized into a meat paste, flattened into paper molds, frozen, X-rayed, and divided so one portion could be analyzed for total lead and the second could undergo in vitro gastrointestinal simulation. Total lead was measured after heating samples at 4500 C for 12 hours, leaching ash with 7M HNO3, autoclaving at 200 kPa (120°C) for 30 minutes, and analyzing by SS 028150-2/ ICP-MS and SS 028150-2/ ICP-AES; procedural blanks were < 0.0005 mg/L. The in vitro simulation used gastric juice adjusted to pH 3, 2.5 hours at 37oC, then intestinal juice adjusted to pH 6.3 for an additional 2 hours at 37oC, followed by centrifugation at 14,000 rpm.

Implications

Certification (HMTc): This source should not be pooled as representative game-meat market occurrence because sampling intentionally targeted wound-channel tissues, which the authors say are normally cut away and discarded. It is useful as C-tier source-pathway context for the fraction of metallic bullet lead that becomes bioaccessible under the study’s in vitro conditions.

Courses: The paper is useful for separating total metallic lead in tissue, bioaccessible lead released during digestion, and bioavailable lead absorbed by the body. It also illustrates why sample location around a bullet wound channel can dominate measured game-meat lead values.

App: The source can support explanatory game-meat cards about lead-fragment dissolution, while warning that wound-channel samples are not the same as ordinary retail or served portions.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• lead
• meat
• meat-and-poultry
• organ-meats
• game-meats
• efsa-lead-contam-2010

Verification notes

• PDF text was extracted with pdftotext -layout to /tmp/mfk_june8_583.txt; the article identity block, Summary, CT/sample-collection methods, lead-analysis methods, in vitro simulation methods, Tables 1-5, Results and Discussion, Summing up, and references were checked against this page.
• DOI 10.26502/jatr.47, title text, raw handle MFK_lead-in-game-meat-a-study-of-bioaccessibility, and candidate cite-key qvarfort2025-game-meat-lead-bioaccessibility were searched before creation; no existing source page was found.
• Numerical values are copied without unit conversion. Table 4 preserves the source’s printed decimal comma in 0,19; Table 5 preserves <0.05.
• Source-internal inconsistencies are retained rather than reconciled: the identity block prints an impossible accepted/published sequence; the abstract/Summary say less than 2% and mean 0.5%, the Results prose says 0.13 to 2% (mean 0.98 %), while Table 4 includes 2.38; Results prose says Object 2 total lead ranges 14 to 590 mg/kg ww, while Table 4 includes 3.7, 12, and 13 plus the 0.097 neck-tissue control.
• Table 1 literature-review rows are recorded only as transported context and are not treated as this source’s own occurrence dataset.
• Speciation: the source concerns metallic elemental lead fragments and dissolved/bioaccessible lead compounds from those fragments. No arsenic, mercury, chromium, or organotin speciation is involved.
• Brand firewall: ammunition model names printed in table headings and methods were not attached to contamination values on this page. Instrument and laboratory details are scientific-method context.
• Frontmatter slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md. The taxonomy has game-meats as a product slug but lacks exact wild-boar-meat or game-meat ingredient slugs, so ingredients route through broad meat, meat-and-poultry, and organ-meats.

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.