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Human Methylmercury Exposure and Potential Impacts in Central Tibet: Food and Traditional Tibetan Medicine

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Abstract

Methylmercury presents potent neurotoxicity to humans. Fish consumption is the leading source of human exposure to methylmercury worldwide. However, the exposure source in Tibet remains poorly understood because of the scarcity of observational data on most Tibetan foods, although high mercury levels were recently detected in some traditional Tibetan medicines. Here, the results of field investigations show that the joint consumption of traditional Tibetan medicines (TTMs), fish, and rice constitutes a primary exposure pathway to methylmercury in Tibetans and that the probable daily intake of methylmercury is close to that for many coastal regions. People who are young and high-income may have higher methylmercury exposure levels mainly because of economic development and cultural exchanges among regions. Our analysis indicates that a large proportion of the Tibetan population are likely to face a high methylmercury exposure risk and that mercury-susceptible populations in Tibet should be attentive to consuming TTMs with fish.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Junming Guo at the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute and Qianggong Zhang at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research for their help with the measurements. This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41630748, 41977311 and 41821005). The involvement of Deji was supported by the key R&D and transformation plan of the Science and Technology Department of Tibet (XZ-201801-GB-05).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Education Laboratory of Earth Surface Process, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Menghan Cheng, Maodian Liu, Qing Luo, Zhihao Zhang, Liuliang Yuan, Chenghao Yu, Han Xie, Huiming Lin, Qianru Zhang & Xuejun Wang

  2. School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Maodian Liu

  3. Department of Ocean Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clearwater Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Dou Li

  4. Department of Life Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clearwater Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Liuliang Yuan

  5. Department of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, Tibet University, Tibet, 850012, China

    De Ji

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  1. Menghan Cheng
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  2. Maodian Liu
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  3. Dou Li
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Cheng, M., Liu, M., Li, D. et al. Human Methylmercury Exposure and Potential Impacts in Central Tibet: Food and Traditional Tibetan Medicine. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 107, 449–458 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00128-021-03216-5

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