Mercury Levels in Fish for Human Consumption from the Southeast Gulf of California: Tissue Distribution and Health Risk Assessment

Abstract

We assessed human health risk due to mercury (Hg) concentrations in fish from three coastal lagoons (Urías, Huizache, and Teacapán) in the SE Gulf of California. We also determined Hg distribution in muscle and liver of analyzed ichthyofauna and compared the results among studied areas according to tissue, season, and lagoon system by using multivariate analyses. Levels of Hg in most of the analyzed fish followed the sequence liver > muscle. The highest Hg levels in muscle (2.80 µg g dw) and liver (9.51 µg g dw) were measured in Cynoscion reticulatus and Pomadasys macracanthus, respectively, although according to the multivariate analyses, statistical differences of Hg concentrations were not found according to the season and the tissue but were found according to the system. It seems that the higher concentrations were associated with areas where the hydrological regime is lower. With respect to health risk assessment, the highest hazard quotients were estimated for Cynoscion reticulatus (0.45) and Stellifer furthii (0.29) from Urías and Pomadasys macracanthus (0.35) from Huizache. None of the studied fish represent a risk for consumers in terms of Hg levels in the edible portion.

Estudio de la acumulación de compuestos farmacéuticos de uso humano en especies de peces de la Cuenca del Plata

“…Las evaluaciones de riesgo para la salud humana en relación al consumo de peces contaminados han sido muy utilizadas en el caso de metales como el mercurio u otros contaminantes persistentes (Batt et al, 2017;Jiang et al, 2005;Martínez-Salcido et al, 2018). Para el caso particular de los fármacos, si bien se han realizado evaluaciones de riesgo vinculadas al consumo de agua (Cao et al, 2020;Schwab et al, 2005) o vegetales (Christou et al, 2017;Prosser and Sibley, 2015) contaminados por este tipo de sustancias.…”