Toxic and essential trace elemental contents in fish species from the Black Sea, Turkey

Toxic and essential element content of ten different fish species from the Black Sea were determined by atomic absorption spectrometry after microwave digestion method. The validation of the presented procedure is performed by the analysis of standard reference materials (NRCC-DORM 2 Dogfish Muscle). The relative standard deviations were found to be lower than 10%. Toxic element content in fish samples were found 25–84 μg/kg for mercury, 0.11–0.32 μg/g for arsenic, 0.28–0.87 μg/g for lead, 0.10–0.35 μg/g for cadmium, 1.14–3.60 μg/g for nickel. Trace element content in fish samples were found 36.2–145 μg/g for iron, 0.65–2.78 μg/g for copper, 2.76–9.10 μg/g for manganese, 38.8–93.4 μg/g for zinc, 0.19–0.85 μg/g for selenium, 0.63–1.74 μg/g for chromium. The levels of lead and cadmium in fish samples were higher than the recommended legal limits for human consumption.