Żarski and colleagues measured mercury in liver, kidney, and muscle tissues from adult mallards collected at Włocławek Reservoir in Poland. The study is routeable for game-bird and organ-meat mercury context because it reports tissue concentrations and identifies muscle as the lowest-concentration tissue. It does not speciate mercury as methylmercury.
Key numbers
- Sample: 30 adult mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), 2013/2014 autumn hunting season, Włocławek Reservoir, Poland. Pectoral muscle, liver, and kidney sampled per bird. All concentrations are total mercury in mg/kg wet weight.
- Table 1, all birds (n = 30): liver mean 0.154 (SD 0.145, median 0.105, Q25-Q75 0.064-0.170, min-max 0.010-0.689); kidneys mean 0.122 (SD 0.092, median 0.101, Q25-Q75 0.052-0.145, min-max 0.013-0.423); muscles mean 0.110 (SD 0.196, median 0.055, Q25-Q75 0.027-0.091, min-max 0.009-0.925).
- Tissue ranking by mean: liver > kidneys > muscles. The Mann-Whitney U test found that tissue mean differences across the full cohort were not statistically significant; Spearman correlations between every tissue pair were significant at p ≤ 0.01.
- Cohort splits into two subpopulations by Σ-tissue Hg threshold 0.600 mg/kg wet weight. Subpopulation I (n = 23, Σ < 0.600): liver mean 0.100, kidneys 0.088, muscles 0.049. Subpopulation II (n = 7, Σ > 0.600): liver mean 0.330, kidneys 0.233, muscles 0.309. Subpopulation II contains individual birds with muscle Hg up to 0.925 mg/kg wet weight (Table 4, bird 15).
- Each per-sample reported value is the arithmetic mean of three analytical replicates on that sample.
- The authors conclude that mercury levels were “relatively high” but that, given the share of wild-duck meat in the Polish diet, consumption of a 100 g portion from the high-Σ subpopulation covers approximately 9% of the WHO PTWI (5 µg/kg body weight, of which methylmercury should not exceed 1.6 µg/kg body weight) for a 70 kg adult.
Methods (brief)
Mercury was measured by cold-vapor atomic absorption spectrometry (CV-AAS) on an Altec AMA-254 automatic mercury analyzer (Prague, Czech Republic). The analyzer was calibrated with a polarographically pure mercury standard in 2% HNO3. Detection limit was 0.001 mg Hg/kg. Method validation used BCR CRM 463 (tuna fish) reference material with certified Hg concentration 2.85 mg/kg; the recovered value was 2.49 mg/kg (87.36% recovery). Samples (≤ 300 mg per aliquot) of pectoral muscle, liver, and whole kidney (cranial, medial, and caudal divisions combined) were analyzed; each sample was measured in triplicate and reported as the arithmetic mean of the three replicates. Concentrations are reported per kilogram of wet tissue. The paper reports total mercury only; no inorganic/methylmercury speciation was performed. Statistical analyses were run in Statistica 12; normality was tested with the Shapiro-Wilk W test and rejected, so tissue-pair differences were tested with the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test and tissue-pair associations with Spearman rank correlation at p ≤ 0.05 and p ≤ 0.01 thresholds.
Implications
Certification: This source supports game-meat mercury context for wild birds but does not support methylmercury-specific certification rows.
Courses: It helps explain why organ tissue and muscle tissue should not be pooled without a basis label.
App: It can provide context for wild duck or game-bird entries where relevant.
Wiki pages this source may touch
Verification notes
The source reports total Hg by tissue. Do not route it to methylmercury without a separate speciation source.
Update history
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