Marine Pollution Bulletin, cilt.187, 2023 (SCI-Expanded)
© 2022 Elsevier LtdThis study investigated toxic metal levels in a total of 222 canned tuna sampled from 36 countries (developed and developing) during 2017–2019. For this purpose, four toxic metals (Cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), and arsenic (As) were analyzed using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Under the optimized conditions, the limit of detection (LOD) and the limit of quantification (LOQ) of the instrument ranged from 0.025 to 0.18 and from 0.54 to 0.045 ppb, respectively, with recoveries in the range of 98 %–108 %. Moreover, noncancer risk using the target hazard quotient (THQ) of each of the four toxic metals was assessed, and cancer risk using the target cancer risk (TCR) of inorganic arsenic (iAs) was evaluated. The THQ values of Hg were higher than the limits of safe (THQ ˃1) and TCR showed the carcinogenic risk for iAs for consumers when consuming more than one meal of canned tuna per week.