A series of menhaden oils collected at various stages of processing have been analyzed for zinc, cadmium, lead, copper and arsenic by wet digestion and electrothermal atomization-atomic absorption spectrophotometry (aas). The results are compared, for some metals, with 2 other methods of oil treatment: extraction with nitric acid and dilution with methyl isobutyl ketone. Both the extraction and dilution procedures appeared to measure only the loosely bound, inorganic portion of the metals: determination of the total metal content including organometallics required wet digestion. The crude oil contained the largest metal burden but successive refining steps reduced the metal content to a level which met the FAO/WHO Codex standards. Hydrogenation did not significandy alter the metal concentration in the oils.