Saba et al. 2015 - Mercury in Suillus luteus from Poland, Belarus, and Sweden

Saba and colleagues measured total mercury in 1,738 Suillus luteus fruiting bodies from Poland, Belarus, and Sweden. The source is routeable for mushroom total-mercury occurrence because it reports cap, stem, soil, cap/stem ratio, and bioconcentration metrics on a dry-weight basis across many sites. Cap Hg means ranged from 0.13 to 0.33 mg/kg dry matter, while stem means ranged from 0.038 to 0.095 mg/kg dry matter.

Key numbers

All mushroom and soil concentrations below are mg/kg dry matter.

• Cap total Hg means ranged from 0.13 +/- 0.05 to 0.33 +/- 0.13 across sites or site groups.
• Stem total Hg means ranged from 0.038 +/- 0.014 to 0.095 +/- 0.038.
• Underlying soil total Hg ranged from 0.0030 to 0.15, with group means from 0.0078 +/- 0.0035 to 0.053 +/- 0.025.
• Cap-to-stem concentration ratios ranged from 1.8 +/- 0.4 to 5.3 +/- 2.6, showing preferential Hg accumulation in caps.
• Reported bioconcentration factors ranged from 3.6 +/- 1.3 to 42 +/- 18. The authors estimated that consumption up to 300 g/week fresh from background areas would not exceed the PTWI value used in the paper.

Methods (brief)

The authors compiled and analyzed Suillus luteus fruiting bodies from multiple European sites over 1995-2013. Caps and stems were analyzed separately for total Hg on a dry-weight basis, with paired soil measurements used for bioconcentration calculations. The paper does not report methylmercury.

Implications

This is a high-sample-count source for mercury-total in wild edible mushrooms. It is useful for geography-aware mushroom Hg baselines because it spans Poland, Belarus, and Sweden, and because it separates cap and stem. It should not be routed as methylmercury evidence.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• mushrooms
• mercury-total

Verification notes

• DOI, title, authors, journal, and online publication year were taken from the PDF header.
• Values are dry matter and cap/stem specific. Any fresh-weight use requires an explicit conversion.
• The source has soil rows, but food-occurrence routing should use mushroom cap/stem rows, not soil concentrations.

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.