ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1609067
ICP-MS-Based Quantitative Analysis and Risk Assessment of Metal(loid)s in Fish Species from Chennai, India
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Biosciences and Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
- 2Department of Forensic Science, School of Bioengineering and Biosciences Lovely Professional University, Phagwara (144411), Punjab, India, Phagwara (144411), Punjab, India
- 3Division of food processing technology, Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences,, Coimbatore (641114), Tamil Nadu, India, India
- 4VIT School of Agricultural Innovation and Advanced Learning, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore-632014, India, Vellore-632014, India, India
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Presence of heavy metal pollutants indicates an alarming situation that disrupts marine trophic dynamics, that presents substantial threats to fish populations; ultimately affects human societies that depend on these aquatic resources for sustainable nutrition. Present study focussed on three fish species from Chennai (Tamil Nadu, India) namely Nemipterus japonicus, Oreochromis mossambicus, and Lates calcarifer. Heavy metal profiling was conducted on the organs such as liver, gills and muscle tissue. ICP-MS was utilized to determine the heavy metal. Upon the analysis of heavy metals such as Arsenic (As), Cadmium (Cd) Chromium (Cr), Mercury (Hg), Lead (Pb), Strontium (Sr) and Vanadium (V), we observed the concentration range (dry weight) of 0.044–0.096 µg/kg, 0.696–0.778 µg/kg, 5.259–12.399 µg/kg, 0.020–0.660 µg/kg, 15.400–17.649 µg/kg, 1.068–15.200 µg/kg, 0.150–1.208 µg/kg respectively across the three different fish samples. The muscle tissues of Oreochromis mossambicus exhibits the highest heavy metal contamination level particularly due to its elevated chromium (Cr) concentration of 12.399 µg/kg. Oreochromis mossambicus has the highest Hazard Index (HI) in both children (0.238) and adults (0.136). However, the HQ and HI were <1 which is suggesting a safer food to be consumed in terms of HM contamination. These findings underscore the need for strict monitoring and regulatory measures to reduce further heavy metal contamination in seafood.
Keywords: Trace Elements, Environmental Impacts, health risk assessment, Sea food, Contaminated fish
Received: 14 Apr 2025; Accepted: 18 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ray, Jangid, Anu, Pathak, Chavan and Vashishth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rahul Vashishth, School of Biosciences and Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
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