A survey of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and furans in Korean seafood—a congener-specific approach

摘要

Korea has a fast growing dynamic economy that influences the standard of living of the society, including changes in dietary habits. For example, cereals intake has decreased from 538 g per person per day in 1969-1970 to 332 g in 1992-1993. Conversely, animal food has increased from 57 g per person per day to 229 g in 1992-1993, in which seafood supplied 34.93% of the diet and 25.32% meat (Tchai, 1997). Thus, seafood dominates the Korean diet, including various species of fish, shellfish and a variety of invertebrates. An inadvertent side effect of development is the introduction of toxins into the human diet arising from industrial, agricultural and municipal waste disposal activities. Typical toxicants are the polychlorinated dibenzo dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzo furans (PCDFs). Most industrialized nations have monitoring programs to determine these toxicants in the diet, but Korea is relatively behind other nations in monitoring these compounds. To our knowledge, there is only one report in Korea (Choi et al., 2002) on the levels of a limited set of dioxins in makerel. Hence, an extensive 'market basket' survey was conducted with a wide range of seafood including 17 species of fish, nine invertebrate species and a range of processed seafood.