Total Mercury, Methyl Mercury, and Selenium Levels in the Red Meat of Small Cetaceans Sold for Human Consumption in Japan
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We surveyed the total mercury (T-Hg) and methyl mercury (M-Hg) levels in red meat products (n = 160) from small cetacean species sold for human consumption in markets throughout Japan from 2000 to 2003. Genetic identification showed that the red meat products originated from nine species: false killer whale, bottlenose dolphin, short-finned pilot whale, striped dolphin, rough-toothed dolphin, Risso's dolphin, pantropical spotted dolphin, Baird's beaked whale, and Dall's porpoise. T-Hg and M-Hg concentrations in all red meat products exceeded the provisional permitted levels of T-Hg (0.4 microg/wet g) and M-Hg (0.3 microg/ wet g) in fish and shellfish set by the Japanese government, respectively. The average M-Hg level in the most contaminated species (false killer whale) was 11.5 microg/wet g, and that in the least contaminated species (Dall's porpoise) was about 1.0 microg/wet g, exceeding or equaling the Codex guideline of M-Hg in predatory fishes (1.0 microg/wet g). Contamination levels of T-Hg and M-Hg differed considerably among samples of the nine species and among individuals of a particular species. The highest M-Hg was about 26 microg/ wet g in a sample from a striped dolphin, 87-times higher than the permitted level. The consumption of only 4 g of this product would exceed the provisional tolerable weekly intake of M-Hg for someone of 60 kg body weight (1.6 microg/kg-bw/ week). Although a high correlation between T-Hg and selenium (Se) was observed in these products, the molar ratio of T-Hg to Se was substantially higher than 1. The consumption of red meat from small cetaceans, therefore, could pose a health problem for not only pregnant women but also for the general population.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".