Toxic metals in the muscle and liver of five main commercially-important fishes from the Persian Gulf, Southern Iran

The purpose of this study was to determine and compare the concentrations of six toxic metals (Cd, Pb, Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn) in the muscle and hepatic tissues of five commercially important fish species including narrow-barred Spanish mackerel, Scomberomorus commerson, Black pomfret, Parastromateus niger, Silver pomfret, Pampus argenteus, blackspot snapper, Lutjanus fulviflammus and Tigertooth croaker, Otolithes ruber, since they are very common in the household fish consumption. The fish samples were collected from three main landing areas along Bushehr and Hormozgan provinces during spring 2017. Our results indicated that lead concentration was higher than those of other measured heavy metals in all examined fish species, while it was an inverse situation for cadmium. We found that the concentration of the measured metals totally were higher in the liver than in muscle of all the examined fish. There was no significant intra-specific variation in metal concentration among the fish from the same species. Since it is very important to the consumer to choose between the species, we also detected the mean values of the metal concentration in the muscle of the relatively same aged species, sampled from same stations.