The health risk assessment of organochlorine pesticides in smoked fish products available in Szczecin, Poland

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the concentration of organochlorine pesticides [HCH and isomers (alpha, beta, gamma), aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor and heptachlor epoxide and DDT and its metabolites (op'-DDD, pp'-DDD, op'-DDT, pp'-DDE, pp'-DDT] in smoked fish. Analysis was made of 12 typical smoked fish products that are the most popular among customers from the city of Szczecin, Poland. Pesticide residues were found in all samples of smoked fish. The smoked sprat and cold-smoked Baltic salmon were the most contaminated smoked fish products in terms of chlorine pesticides. The sum of DDT metabolites ranged from 1.48 (smoked mackerel) to 35.53 ng/g wet weight (smoked sprat), with the lowest concentrations found for op'-DDT and the highest for pp'-DDE. The level of heptachlor epoxide isomer B was low and ranged from 0.06 +/- 0.01 (smoked eel) to 0.27 +/- 0.07 ng/g w.w. (smoked sprat). The content of heptachlor was 0.48-1.99 ng/g w.w. Concentration of endrin was higher compared to other pesticides, ranged from 1.50 (cold-smoked salmon fillet) to 16.84 ng/g w.w (hot-smoked warehou). The contamination of smoked products was significantly low and poses no risk to the health of consumers provided that they eat a diverse diet. The concentration of organochlorine pesticides in the analysed products was below the standards accepted in European countries.

Assessment of health risks associated with organochlorine pesticides levels in processed fish products from Lake Victoria

“…The deep fried fish products analysed contained high levels of organochlorine pesticides such as HCB, Dieldrin, p, pꞌ-DDE and Lindane as compared to other products like trims, salted-sundried and smoked products probably due to environmental contamination that occurs along the food chain as seen in Table 1. Smoking of fish tends to increase the levels of persistent organochlorine compounds due to a decrease in co-distillation with steam and the penetration of the compounds with smoke to the fish meat (Witczak and Tomza-Marciniak, 2010;Witczak, 2012). Our findings support this as most of the smoked samples had significant quantities of different persistent organochlorine pesticides.…”

Persistent Organochlorine Compounds Levels in Selected Fish Species from Lake Victoria and Associated Human Health Risks

“…In the European Union (EU), there are no specifications for MRL regarding OCPs in fish and fish products. If we consider fat contained in meat and meat products, then the highest admisible residue limits of OCPs according to the Regulation of the Ministry of Health of 2007 in Poland are 200µg/kg for Aldrin, Dieldrin, and HCB and 100µg/kg for β-HCH [32]. It is generally noted that the mean residue levels of the organochlorine compounds in the investigated fresh fish from Lake Victoria were far below the MRL set by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (Table 3) for fish and other fishery products.…”