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. 2019 Oct 17;14(10):e0219336.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0219336. eCollection 2019.

Bioaccumulation of heavy metals in some commercially important fishes from a tropical river estuary suggests higher potential health risk in children than adults

A S Shafiuddin Ahmed  1 , Sharmin Sultana  2 , Ahasan Habib  1   3 , Hadayet Ullah  4 , Najiah Musa  3 , M Belal Hossain  1 , Md Mahfujur Rahman  5 , Md Shafiqul Islam Sarker  6
Affiliations

Bioaccumulation of heavy metals in some commercially important fishes from a tropical river estuary suggests higher potential health risk in children than adults

A S Shafiuddin Ahmed et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The Karnaphuli River estuary, located in southeast coast of Bangladesh, is largely exposed to heavy metal contamination as it receives a huge amount of untreated industrial effluents from the Chottagram City. This study aimed to assess the concentrations of five heavy metals (As, Pb, Cd, Cr and Cu) and their bioaccumulation status in six commercially important fishes, and also to evaluate the potential human health risk for local consumers. The hierarchy of the measured concentration level (mg/kg) of the metals was as follows: Pb (13.88) > Cu (12.10) > As (4.89) > Cr (3.36) > Cd (0.39). The Fulton's condition factor denoted that fishes were in better 'condition' and most of the species were in positive allometric growth. The bioaccumulation factors (BAFs) of the contaminants observed in the species were in the following orders: Cu (1971.42) > As (1042.93) > Pb (913.66) > Cr (864.99) > Cd (252.03), and among the specimens, demersal fish, Apocryptes bato appeared to be the most bioaccumulative organism. Estimated daily intake (EDI), target hazard quotient (THQ), hazard index (HI) and carcinogenic risk (CR) assessed for potential human health risk implications suggest that the values were within the acceptable threshold for both adults and children. However, calculated CR values indicated that both age groups were not far from the risk, and HI values demonstrated that children were nearly 6 times more susceptible to non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health effects than adults.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Six sampling locations in Karnaphuli River estuary and the source of heavy metal pollution.
[Reprinted from (www.wikipedia.org) under a CC BY license, with permission from (Wikipedia), original copyright (2007)].
Fig 2
Fig 2. Loading plots of principal component analysis (PCA) of elements.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Hierarchical cluster (dendrogram) using Ward linkage method among the experimented metals in fish species.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Bioaccumulation factor among the species that varied from particular metals and species.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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