Arsenic speciation in marine fish and shellfish from American Samoa

Abstract

We speciated arsenic compounds in marine fish and shellfish from two islands of the United States Territory of American Samoa in the South Pacific, and found that inorganic arsenic occurred as a minor fraction. The proportion of inorganic arsenic was generally far below the levels of prevailing assumptions typically used in human health risk assessments when only total arsenic is analysed. Fish and shellfish were collected from Tutuila and Ofu between May 2001 and March 2002 ( n = 383 individual specimens, with 117 composites); sites were selected based on habitat type and were representative of those frequented by local fishers. These islands have moderately developed reef fish fisheries among artisanal fishers, are far removed from any industrial or mining sources of arsenic, and presented an opportunity to study arsenic variations in marine biota from un-impacted environments. Target species were from various trophic levels and are among those frequently harvested for human consumption. We found evidence that arsenic concentrated in some marine species, but did not tend to follow classic trophic patterns for biomagnification or bioaccumulation. For the majority of samples, inorganic arsenic was less than 0.5% of total arsenic, with only a few samples in the range of 1–5%, the latter being mollusks which are recognized to have unusually high arsenic levels in general. This work supports the importance of speciation analysis for arsenic, because of the ubiquitous occurrence of arsenic in the environment, and its variable toxicity depending on chemical form.