The Bioaccumulation and Health Risk Assessment of Metals among Two Most Consumed Species of Angling Fish (Cyprinus carpio and Pseudohemiculter dispar) in Liuzhou (China): Winter Should Be Treated as a Suitable Season for Fish Angling

Abstract

Wild fish caught by anglers were validated to be commonly polluted by metals, but their contamination status could be varied with changing seasons. To determine the seasonal variation in metal pollution and health risks in these fish, this study took Liuzhou City as an example to investigate the concentrations of eight metals in two dominant angling fishes (Cyprinus carpio and Pseudohemiculter dispar) collected, respectively, in winter and summer. The obtained results suggested the mean concentrations of metals in fish are overall lower in winter. Only Cr, Zn, and Cd in some fish were beyond the thresholds in summer. The significant correlations between fish length and weight and most metals suggested the biological dilution effect could exert its influence in winter. The similar distribution of metals in winter suggested that metal bioaccumulation should be manipulated by living habitats, while the inconsistent distribution of metals in summer may be related to the variation in feeding behavior. The metal pollution index (Pi) values were all below 0.2 in winter, which suggested no metal contamination in fish, but most fish were found to be mostly contaminated by Cr and Cd in summer, which was confirmed by their Pi > 0.2. The fish could be consumed freely in winter due to the total target hazard quotient (TTHQ) below 1, while the consumption of fish was not entirely safe in summer, particularly for children, due to TTHQ values that were generally beyond 1. Given the higher weekly recommended consumption of fish in winter, winter should be treated as a suitable season for fish angling.

The Size Screening Could Greatly Degrade the Health Risk of Fish Consuming Associated to Metals Pollution—An Investigation of Angling Fish in Guangzhou, China

“…Despite the well-being of fish consuming being widely confirmed in decreasing the risk of various diseases and promoting the normal development of the central nervous and visual systems and the fetal brain [ 3 ], it does not mean that fish consuming cannot harm human health. On the contrary, the health risk of fish consuming also hides beneath the well-being of fish consuming, which dominantly resulted from the excessive uptake of various contaminants from the consumption of the contaminated fish, particularly metals contamination [ 2 , 4 ]. Compared to market fish that is under severe surveillance, wild fish should be more susceptible to metals contamination [ 5 ].…”

“…More than 220 million to 700 million anglers were reported to be active across the world [ 9 ], among them, the active anglers were estimated to be more than 90 million in China [ 1 ]. Despite the widespread contamination of metals among angling fish that was disclosed before [ 2 , 4 , 10 , 11 ], given the scarcity of wild fish, angling fish were still largely consumed by anglers and their families, which make it very hard to reduce the health risk of angling fish consuming by only relying on persuading the public to refuse angling fish consuming, so that the decreased health risk of angling fish consuming should be still depended on to degrade the contamination of metals among angling fish itself. Therefore, developing a new approach to reduce the metals contamination of angling fish is urgently needed for safer fish consuming.…”

Biochemical properties and heavy metal analysis of a commercial fish Opisthopterus tardoore

“…The presence of elevated concentrations of heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, manganese, lead, nickel and zinc are well documented in marine habitat Ahmed et al, 2019;Shah, 2021;Hao et al, 2022). Sometime, these toxic metals are accumulated by different body parts of fish either in epidermal skin surfaces or gills or food tracts and/or combinations of all parts but it differs from species to species and also the nature of bioavailability (Dohaish, 2018;Feng et al, 2020;Han et al, 2021;Tabrez et al, 2021).…”

The Influence of the Reduction in Clay Sediments in the Level of Metals Bioavailability—An Investigation in Liujiang River Basin after Wet Season

“…Despite metals’ bioavailability being widely used for assessing metal contamination in rivers with different functions, such as urban rivers [ 5 ], underground rivers [ 6 ] and artificial channels [ 7 ], etc., the seasonal variations in metals’ bioavailability in sediments were rarely reported, which was mainly because of the general concept that the sedimentary system was considered to be of sufficiently high stability to resist the impacts of environmental fluctuations on metals’ bioavailability [ 8 ]. However, the seasonal variations in metal bioaccumulation were successively found to be significant in various aquatic biotas all over the world, such as fishes [ 9 ], algae [ 10 ], and planktons [ 11 ], etc., which suggested the bioconversion of metals in rivers was variable, instead of invariable. As the predominant source of metals in river, sediments may be hard to keep from these modifications to metals’ bioconversion in rivers.…”

“…Therefore, it is inadequate to determine the role of environmental fluctuations in regulating metals’ bioavailability by only relying on a one time survey in the monsoon. Currently, the seasonal variations in metals were successively reported to be significant either in the water and or the fish of the Liujiang River Basin [ 9 , 28 ], which suggested the management of metal contamination in the Liujiang River Basin may need to focus on their seasonal variations. Therefore, the seasonal environmental fluctuations should be incorporated into the simultaneous variations in the transformation and bioavailability of metals in sediments, which would not only benefit in determining the critical environmental factors that dominated the seasonal variations in metals’ bioavailability, but also could help to comprehensively elucidate the regulation of metals’ bioavailability in sediments.…”