Open Access, Peer-reviewed
pISSN 2288-3886
eISSN 2288-3959
    J Nutr Health. 2014 Oct;47(5):364-373. Korean.
    Published online Oct 31, 2014.
    https://doi.org/10.4163/jnh.2014.47.5.364
    © 2014 The Korean Nutrition Society
    Original Article

    Development of a mercury database for food commonly consumed by Koreans

    Seong-Ah Kim,1 Sangah Shin,1 Jung Won Lee,1 and Hyojee Joung1,2
      • 1Institute of Health and Environment, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea.
      • 2Department of Public Health Nutrition Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea.
    • To whom correspondence should be addressed. tel: +82-2-880-2781, Email: hjjoung@snu.ac.kr
    Received January 17, 2014; Revised March 24, 2014; Accepted September 29, 2014.

    This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

    Abstract

    Purpose

    The purpose of this study was to develop a mercury database for food commonly consumed by Koreans.

    Methods

    Target foods for a mercury database were selected from dietary survey data of the 2007-2009 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES). Data for mercury contents of foods were collected through literature review. Among 702 food items reported by 24 hr dietary recall method, the contents of mercury for 300 food items were selected with systematic evaluation from the literature, which provided analytical values, and those of 56 food items were imputed by using a conversion factor.

    Results

    The mercury database developed in this study covered 50.7% of all kinds of consumed foods and 95.1% of total amount of food intake reported by 2007-2009 KNHANES. In the database, the geometric mean of mercury contents in food items was the highest in the fishes and shellfishes group (41.13 µg/kg, n = 101) followed by mushrooms (18.93 µg/kg, n = 12) and seaweeds (5.92 µg/kg, n = 14), and the lowest in the meats group (0.15 µg/kg, n = 17).

    Conclusion

    The developed mercury database can be used to estimate the dietary mercury exposure of Korean people, and the method for development of a mercury database would be helpful to researchers in development of a new database for other food borne hazardous substances.

    Keywords
    dietary; mercury; intake; database; exposure

    Figures

    Fig. 1
    Overall flow of developing mercury database.

    Tables

    Table 1
    Example of data description for mercury database of commonly consumed foods among Koreans

    Table 2
    Literature sources for mercury content of commonly consumed foods among Koreans

    Table 3
    Characteristics of mercury database construction by food groups

    Table 4
    Coverage and contents of mercury database by food groups

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    MeSH Terms
    Agaricales
    Eating
    Fishes
    Hazardous Substances
    Meat
    Nutrition Surveys
    Shellfish
    Metrics
    Share
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