Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in fish from two coastal lagoons of the central Mexican Pacific

Abstract

Mexico has a great variety of aquatic ecosystems; however, most of them present significant contamination levels. Despite the efforts to monitor toxic and bioaccumulative persistent pollutants, they are still insufficient and outdated data from Mexican coasts, especially in polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), due to the number of aquatic bodies that have received little or no attention. In this regard, the Mexican Pacific's coastal zones and their aquatic ecosystems monitoring PCBs and PAHs in biota is critical because it allows us to estimate the potential risk to human health. This work aimed to determine the total concentration of polychlorinated biphenyls (ΣPCBs) and total polyaromatic hydrocarbons (ΣPAHs) in the muscle of fish collected in two coastal lagoons of the central Mexican Pacific and to determine the non-carcinogenic risk ratio (HQ) based on the monthly per capita consumption of national fish and the consumption of fish associated with fishing communities in Mexico. It was found that the potential risk for fishing communities is considerably higher and correlates to the rate of fish consumption, highlighting their vulnerability to these contaminants.

Development and validation of a new method for the simultaneous determination of PAHs and NDL-PCBs in fish by GC-SQ-MS

“…The main difficulty in these determinations is possible interferences from the substrate (fat, fatty acids, and proteins) as well as that analytes are at very low concentrations (traces). Usually they include Soxhlet extraction, 11,12 a time-consuming technique that requires large volumes of solvents, which is necessarily followed by a fat removal step. Fat removal is performed either by gel permeation chromatography (GPC) or by treatment with sulfuric acid.…”