Assessment of mercury level in commonly consumed marine fishes in Malaysia

Abstract

a b s t r a c tTwelve species of common marine fish consumed by Malaysians were collected from local wholesale market in Malaysia; the mercury concentrations in muscle and liver samples were determined by cold vapour atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The mercury concentration in the samples, expressed in lg g À1 dry weight. It was 0.45 for short-bodied mackerel, 0.04 for scad, 0.04 for narrow-bodied Spanish mackerel, 0.13 for black pomfret, 0.50 for long tail tuna, 0.03 for greasy grouper, 0.09 for chacunda gizzard shad, 0.06 for yellow-banded scad, 0.05 for eastern little tuna, 0.09 for delagoa treadfish bream, 0.10 for giant perch and 0.00 for sardine's muscle tissue. Among the fishes analyzed, long tail tuna had the highest level followed by short-bodied mackerel. Significantly lower levels (P < 0.05) of mercury were found in liver tissues. Total mercury concentration in liver tissues were as follow; 0.03 for short-bodied mackerel, 0.02 for scad, 0.05 for narrow-bodied Spanish mackerel, 0.10 for black pomfret, 0.49 for long tail tuna, 0.03 for greasy grouper, 0.03 for chacunda gizzard shad, 0.04 for yellow-banded scad, 0.02 for eastern little tuna, 0.09 for delagoa treadfish bream, 0.01 for giant perch and 0.01 for sardine. This study indicates that commonly consumed fish from Malaysia have concentrations of mercury below the permissible levels stated in the US FDA guidelines.

Effect of Mercury Transfer from Producer to Consumer in a Marine Environment

“…g -1 (Fig. 7), which was in line with earlier studies [3,6,11]. Fish exposed to three different concentrations showed an increasing trend of Hg concentrations with 96 h exposure.…”

“…Mercury contamination was found to adversely affect organisms through absorption from the seawater, sediment, metal uptake, and bioaccumulation in the aquatic chain [5][6][7][8][9]. The finfish and shellfish provide useful tools for monitoring mercury concentrations and their impact on the aquatic environment [1,8,[10][11].…”

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“…However, lower than south west coast of India (Rejomon et al, 2010), Red sea (Naim and Ahmed, 2008), but comparatively higher than the fishes from Turkey (Dural and Bickici, 2010), south (Raja et al, 2009) and fishes from Indonesia (Agoes and Hamami, 2007). The concentrations of Hg in fishes from West Bengal coast were comparable with fishes from Malaysia (Hajeb et al, 2009) and Thailand (Agusa et al, 2007). However, concentrations were lower than those reports on Gulf of Cambay (Mallampati et al, 2007), and higher than Saudi Arabia (Nawal AlBader, 2008;Waqar, 2004).…”

Assessment of Heavy Metal in Self-caught Saltwater Fish from Port Dickson Coastal Water, Malaysia

“…Coastal water of Port Dickson located on the western coast of Peninsular Malaysia is a potential fish breeding ground. To date, varied levels of heavy metal in fish samples in Malaysia were reported from various collection sites (Fathi et al 2012;Hajeb et al 2009;Irwandi & Farida 2009;Kamaruzzaman et al 2010). However, there is a scarcity of reports on this similar study in literature for local marine fish.…”