Human health risk assessment of potentially toxic elements and microplastics accumulation in products from the Danube River Basin fish market

Overview

Simionov and colleagues measured aluminum (Al), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), Cu, nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), Zn, and mercury (Hg) in muscle tissue from fish and seafood products bought from retailers in Galati, Romania. The paper reports mg/kg fresh weight mean concentrations for 23 taxa, with seafood species generally carrying the highest potentially toxic element levels except for Hg, which the authors report as highest in fish caught in the Lower Danube River sector. The arsenic and mercury measurements are total/unspecified species in the occurrence table; the paper discusses methylmercury and inorganic arsenic toxicology but does not measure methylmercury (MeHg) or inorganic arsenic (iAs) speciation in Table 3.

Key numbers

Table 1 reports 23 taxa, n = 10 specimens per taxon, for a total of 230 fish and seafood specimens. The fish panel includes 18 species, and the seafood panel includes 5 species: gastropod mollusc Rapana venosa, bivalve molluscs Mytilus galloprovincialis and Meretrix lyrata, crustacean Penaeus vannamei, and cephalopod Todarodes sagitus.

Table 3 reports muscle-tissue means in mg/kg fresh weight. The source table states that values are expressed as mean +- standard deviation; the table below transcribes means only so that standard-deviation formatting artifacts in the PDF do not create invented values.

The discussion highlights the highest seafood values in Table 3: R. venosa had Cd 0.492 mg/kg, Pb 4.324 mg/kg, As 2.359 mg/kg, and Cu 13.206 mg/kg; M. lyrata had Ni 0.768 mg/kg and Al 25.866 mg/kg; and M. galloprovincialis had Zn 37.693 mg/kg.

For Hg, the text reports the highest fish-muscle values in Lower Danube fish: V. vimba 0.280 mg/kg, S. lucioperca 0.260 mg/kg, and L. aspius 0.167 mg/kg. Table 4 reports Hg biomagnification factors above 1 for every analyzed predator fish species: S. aurata 11.05, M. salmoides 9.91, A. immaculata 2.36, S. scombrus 1.67, O. mykiss 1.45, S. glanis 1.87, S. lucioperca 2.67, and L. aspius 2.80.

For exposure modeling, the authors used a Romanian fish-and-seafood ingestion rate of 17.26 g per person/day and reported that THQ and HI scores were significantly lower than 1. The highest EDI values cited in the text were Al and Ni in M. lyrata (5.676 and 0.168 µg/kg/day), As, Cd, Cu, and Pb in R. venosa (0.517, 0.108, 2.898, and 0.949 µg/kg/day), Zn in M. galloprovincialis (8.27 µg/kg/day), Cr in S. salar (0.103 µg/kg/day), and Hg in V. vimba (0.061 µg/kg/day).

Microplastics were identified only in the muscle tissue of bivalve M. galloprovincialis. The FT-IR spectrum indicated polystyrene, with absorption peaks at 3025.5 cm-1, 1601.27 cm-1, 1492.43 cm-1, and 1451.5 cm-1; the particle was a fiber approximately 3500 µm, at a contamination level of one microplastic/individual.

Methods (brief)

Fish and seafood specimens were purchased from retailers in Galati, Romania, identified taxonomically from retailer information and FishBase/SeaLifeBase, and analyzed as edible muscle tissue. For Al, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn, approximately 0.5 g of tissue was digested with Suprapur nitric acid and perhydrol in PTFE-TFM vessels using a Milestone Ethos Easy microwave digestion system, then quantified by ICP-MS on a Perkin Elmer NexION 2000 instrument. Reported LODs in the processed solution were Al 0.00001 µg/L, As 0.0003 µg/L, Cd 0.00006 µg/L, Cr 0.00005 µg/L, Cu 0.00003 µg/L, Ni 0.00006 µg/L, Pb 0.00001 µg/L, and Zn 0.0001 µg/L; Hg was analyzed in fresh samples by thermal decomposition, amalgamation, and AAS using a Milestone DMA-80 evo, with LOD 0.01 µg/kg in a 100 mg sample. Accuracy checks used ERM-BB422 fish muscle and ERM-CE278k mussel tissue. Microplastics were assessed in muscle tissue after KOH digestion and FT-IR imaging. The methods do not report inorganic arsenic, methylmercury, or hexavalent chromium (Cr-VI) speciation for the occurrence table.

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