Overview
This one-page short paper measured total arsenic in up to seven tissues (gill, mid-gut gland, adductor muscle, mantle, foot, siphon, gonad) of five bivalve species bought live from a retail supplier, then fractionated the water-soluble arsenic in gills. Values are in µg/g wet weight. Only the clam Meretrix lusoria showed strongly elevated arsenic in gill.
Key numbers
- Clam (Meretrix lusoria) gill 24.1 µg/g, adductor muscle 0.7 µg/g, mantle 3.5 µg/g wet weight (Table 1).
- Short-necked clam mid-gut gland 12.5 µg/g and siphon 9.3 µg/g in experiment 2 (Table 1).
- Oyster tissues 2.5 to 8.9 µg/g; scallop adductor muscle 1.4 and 2.6 µg/g (Table 1).
Methods (brief)
Tissues pooled from at least 8 specimens, digested with nitric, perchloric and sulfuric acids, and analyzed for total arsenic by ICP emission spectrometry. Gill extracts were fractionated on Dowex 50 and analyzed by HPLC-ICP; arsenobetaine and unidentified compounds dominated except in M. lusoria, where a tetramethylarsonium salt was the main species. No reference material or detection limit is reported.
Evidence Fitness
Total arsenic on pooled tissue samples (one value per tissue and experiment), not whole edible portions, from a 1980s retail purchase. Arsenic in bivalves is largely organic, so total arsenic says little about inorganic arsenic. Raw tissues are a proxy for clam-chowder; that thin page is not linked. The PDF does not print a DOI; the manifest DOI is used.