Cooking makes cadmium contained in Chilean mussels less bioaccessible to humans

In Chile, upwellings occur periodically along the coasts, resuspending metals from the seafloor and reintroducing them to the food web. Chilean blue mussels, Mytilus chilensis, accumulate these toxic compounds and show high concentrations of cadmium. An in vitro simulated digestion method has been applied to specimens of M. chilensis previously contaminated with 109Cd, to measure the bioaccessibility of cadmium for humans. The effects of the cooking process on the cadmium content of this species and on the resulting change in dietary bioaccessibility have also been evaluated. While cooking resulted in an increase in cadmium concentration in mussel flesh, cadmium remaining in the cooked flesh was also significantly less bioaccessible than cadmium occurring in the raw tissue. Estimations made in this study show that the intake of Cd from mussels by the Chilean population does not exceed the toxicological reference values established by the FAO/WHO; consequently, a health risk situation is not indicated.