Content of toxic elements in tissues of hunted animals on the basis of research results of 2003–2017

Overview

This Polish peer-reviewed narrative review synthesises 41 primary studies published between 2003 and 2017 on Pb, Cd, As, and Hg concentrations in the muscle, liver, and kidney of wild boar (Sus scrofa), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), and red deer (Cervus elaphus) hunted across Central and Western Europe — predominantly Poland, with comparisons to Croatia, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, and Spain. The authors report per-tissue mean ± SD with min/max and an “UP” column expressing each cell as a percentage of the applicable EU or Polish regulatory threshold (EU 1881/2006 for Pb and Cd in pig meat and offal, applied as a livestock proxy; the Polish Chief Veterinary Officer’s national action levels for As; EU 2018/73 amending EU 396/2005 for Hg in game meat and offal). The reproduced data document substantial regional contrast — Polish Upper Silesia (Górny Śląsk) kidney Cd in roe deer averaging 80.26 mg/kg w.w. (8026 % UP), versus Polish Masurian Lake District (Pojezierze Mazurskie) roe deer muscle Cd at 0.007 mg/kg w.w. (14 % UP) — and confirm the broader literature pattern that kidney and liver carry the highest Pb, Cd, and Hg burdens, with muscle Pb in red deer (Croatian and Polish data) and roe deer (Croatian data) exceeding the EU pig-meat 0.10 mg/kg threshold across most regional cells reported.

The paper does not generate new measurements; values are attributed to the underlying primary studies via numeric citations (1)–(41) printed in the source-citation column of each table. Several of those primaries are or will be ingested as their own wiki source pages — Gašparík 2017 (S/N (16) in the review’s reference list does not match Gašparík 2017’s metals paper; see Verification notes for the disambiguation against Kramárová 2005, which is the actual (16) cited here).

Key numbers

All values are mean ± SD in mg/kg fresh mass (wet weight, “św. m.”). UP = the review’s “udział procentowy” — percentage of the applicable maximum permitted level. EU 1881/2006 thresholds applied by the authors for the UP calculation are: muscle Pb 0.10 mg/kg, muscle Cd 0.05 mg/kg, kidney Pb 0.50 mg/kg, kidney Cd 1.00 mg/kg, liver Pb 0.50 mg/kg, liver Cd 0.50 mg/kg. Polish national arsenic action levels: muscle 0.20 mg/kg, liver/kidney 0.50 mg/kg. EU 2018/73 Hg thresholds: game-meat muscle and game offal 0.04 mg/kg; wild-boar offal carve-out 0.10 mg/kg. Source-citation numbers in parentheses match the review’s reference list (1)–(41).

Table 1 — Lead (Pb), mg/kg w.w.; 2005–2017 primary data:

Table 2 — Cadmium (Cd), mg/kg w.w.; 2005–2017 primary data:

Table 3 — Arsenic (total As, no speciation in the underlying primaries reviewed here), mg/kg w.w.; 2003–2017 primary data:

Table 4 — Mercury (total Hg, no speciation in the underlying primaries reviewed here), mg/kg w.w.; 2011–2017 primary data:

Authors’ narrative summary of the tabulated data (Discussion, pages 205–208):

• Pb in muscle — highest mean is red deer Warmia/Mazury at 0.2200 mg/kg w.w. (ref 8; 220% of the EU pig-meat 0.10 mg/kg threshold); lowest is roe deer Pojezierze Mazurskie at 0.0120 mg/kg w.w. (ref 7; 12.0% UP).
• Pb in liver — highest is wild boar Viterbo at 0.3290 mg/kg w.w. (ref 6; 65.8% UP); lowest is roe deer Pojezierze Mazurskie at 0.0580 mg/kg w.w. (ref 7; 11.6% UP).
• Pb in kidney — among wild boar kidney cells, Upper Silesia is the highest (1.1900 mg/kg w.w., ref 7; 238% UP) and Vukovar Croatia is the lowest (0.0533 mg/kg w.w., ref 9; 10.7% UP).
• Cd in muscle — highest is red deer Warmia/Mazury at 0.1000 mg/kg w.w. (ref 8; 200% UP); lowest is wild boar at 0.0040 mg/kg w.w. (ref 7; 80% UP under the 0.05 mg/kg muscle threshold — UP is high in relative terms because the threshold is itself tight).
• Cd in liver and kidney of roe deer — highest reported as 6.4350 mg/kg w.w. (liver, Górny Śląsk, ref 7) and 80.2600 mg/kg w.w. (kidney, Górny Śląsk, ref 34); lowest 0.1150 mg/kg w.w. (liver, Pojezierze Mazurskie, ref 7) and 0.7980 mg/kg w.w. (kidney, Bełchatów, ref 34).
• As in muscle — only the roe deer Hungary/Eger cell exceeds the Polish 0.20 mg/kg national action level (0.2700 mg/kg w.w., ref 20; 135% UP). All other muscle-As means are below the threshold.
• Hg — kidney concentrations in roe deer (Górny Śląsk, Warmia/Mazury, Łódź) and red deer (Warmia/Mazury, Łódź) most consistently exceed the EU 2018/73 game-meat 0.04 mg/kg threshold for offal; red deer Łódź kidney at 0.1001 mg/kg w.w. (ref 1) is the highest mean reported (250.3% UP). Wild-boar offal benefits from the carve-out 0.10 mg/kg threshold, so wild-boar kidney Hg means at Górny Śląsk (0.089 mg/kg w.w., ref 7) and Pojezierze Mazurskie (0.046 mg/kg w.w., ref 7) sit below the wild-boar-offal cap despite exceeding the general game-offal cap.

The authors’ overall framing (page 208): “results indicate that meat and internal organs of hunted animals may be characterised by elevated content of toxic elements… exceedances concern selected elements, not all, and elevated quantities are observed in selected organs. Kidneys and liver of free-living mammals are particularly susceptible to accumulation, as confirmed by some of the reviewed results.”

Methods (brief)

Study type: Narrative literature review (Polish: artykuł przeglądowy). Not a systematic review — no PRISMA flow diagram, no stated inclusion or exclusion criteria, no search-string documentation, no inter-rater screening. The 41 references are a curated synthesis selected by the authors to illustrate the geographic spread and tissue-by-tissue concentration ranges for Pb, Cd, As, and Hg in three Central European game species, 2003–2017.

Authors’ contribution: Aggregation of per-tissue mean ± SD with min/max from the 41 primary studies into four comparative tables (Tables 1–4), addition of the “UP” column (percent of applicable EU or Polish regulatory threshold), and a narrative discussion contextualising the exceedances against EU 1881/2006 (Pb, Cd in pig meat/offal applied as a livestock proxy for game), the Polish Chief Veterinary Officer’s national action levels for As, and EU 2018/73 (amending EU 396/2005 wrt mercury MRLs).

Underlying analytical methods are not extracted here — each cell traces to a primary paper with its own method (AAS, ICP-MS, ICP-OES, AMA-254 CV-AAS for Hg, etc.). The review preserves attribution but does not re-summarise the methods. Curators relying on any individual cell for threshold work should consult the cited primary source for the analytical method, LOD/LOQ, and quality control.

Speciation discipline: The review reports total As (“arsen”) and total Hg (“rtęć”) without any claim of speciation that the underlying papers did not perform. The wiki page accordingly uses tAs and tHg in the metals: field, not iAs or MeHg. No Cr or Cr-VI is reported in this review; nickel, aluminium, tin, and uranium are not measured.

Basis: All values are fresh-mass (wet weight) — the source uses “mg/kg św. m.” throughout, where “św. m.” abbreviates “świeża masa” (fresh mass). No dry-weight conversion was attempted; the review does not report moisture corrections.

Implications

Certification: This review is useful for the game-meats product page as a single-source consolidation of 2003–2017 Polish, Croatian, and Central-European game data, but the row-fit is REVIEW not PRIMARY — any HMTc threshold work for game meats should anchor on the primary sources cited here (Durkalec 2015 ref 7, Lazarus 2014 ref 19, Bilandžić 2010 ref 3, Falandysz 2005 ref 8, Florijančić 2015 ref 9, Giżejewska 2017 ref 10, Kramárová 2005 refs 16 and 17, Piskorová 2003 ref 24, Albińska 2011 ref 1, Skibniewski 2015 ref 30, Szkoda 2012 ref 34, etc.), several of which are independently ingest candidates. The review’s reported “highest mean cell” values (kidney Cd at 80.26 mg/kg w.w., kidney Pb at 1.19 mg/kg w.w.) are dataset extremes from a single Upper-Silesia industrial-region study (Durkalec 2015) and are not representative of game meat broadly — using these as standards anchors without the underlying source’s sampling-frame context would overstate the typical exposure.

Courses: Useful as a case study in (1) the gap in EU regulation between farmed meat (with explicit Pb/Cd thresholds in EU 1881/2006) and game meat (excluded from those tables, so livestock thresholds are applied as a proxy by regulators and researchers); (2) the regional contrast within a single country — Upper Silesia / Górny Śląsk as a post-industrial Cd/Pb hotspot vs Pojezierze Mazurskie as a low-baseline lake-district reference — visible across the Pb, Cd, and Hg tables when read by region; (3) tissue-selective bioaccumulation patterns: kidney > liver > muscle for Cd and Hg, with Pb additionally elevated in muscle by ammunition-fragment contamination near the wound channel (a pattern this review does not analyse directly but the underlying primaries do, e.g. Gašparík 2017).

App: Provides 2003–2017 Polish and Central European wild-boar, roe deer, and red deer occurrence data spanning ~10 jurisdictional sub-regions within Poland and ~5 neighbouring countries. Per-tissue means with regional breakdowns are well-suited to the geographic_breakdown sub-field on the game-meats product page and on the meat-and-poultry / organ-meats ingredient pages — particularly useful as variance evidence for the seasonal-geographic-variance ingest stream, since the within-Poland regional spread for kidney Cd in roe deer (0.798 → 80.26 mg/kg w.w.) is a 100-fold range driven by industrial-region land use. The synthesis pass (Part 9) will be responsible for triangulating these review-tabulated cells against the primary sources before populating ingredient contamination_profile values, since several of the review’s cells are themselves drawn from the same Durkalec 2015 study.

Related evidence

• Meat and Poultry
• Organ Meats (Kidney and Liver)
• Game meats (venison, bison, rabbit)
• Lead
• Cadmium
• Arsenic, Total
• Mercury, Total
• Commission Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 setting maximum levels for certain contaminants in foodstuffs
• EU Regulation 2018/73 - Mercury-compound MRLs in food and feed

Update history

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