Aquatic food safety on e-commerce in China: profiles of trace elements in tilapia products and implication for general population exposure

Abstract

The Internet has facilitated the sale of aquatic products on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, Jingdong, allowing people to meet their daily nutritional needs without leaving home. While e-commerce platforms have facilitated people's lives, they have also made the risk of food contamination difficult to control. Consequently, it is necessary to assess the risk of food sold by e-commerce. Trace elements contamination in aquatic food is a worldwide issue. In this study, an automated tool was written in Python to search 11,596 information about tilapia products sold on e-commerce platforms, and collect samples based on the above data. The content of trace elements in representative samples sold on these e-commerce platforms was quantitatively analyzed (n=147). The results indicate that over 90 % of the samples contained more than 9 trace elements. The levels of trace elements in canned tilapia were significantly higher than those in frozen and pickled tilapia (p<0.05). Based on target hazard factor assessment method, arsenic was found to have the highest potential dietary risk (THQ>1). Additionally, the risk of intake for children was found to be 2–3 times higher than that for adults. It is suggested that children limit their intake of canned tilapia, pickled tilapia, and frozen tilapia fillets to 0.05 kg/day, 0.17 kg/day, and 0.14 kg/day, respectively. The high detection frequency of trace elements provides a snapshot of the prevalence of trace elements in tilapia products sold on Chinese e-commerce platforms.