Study On Risk Assessment Of Cadmium In Molluscs

Cadmium has been proved to be a highly toxic substance to human body, whichwas formally identified as key pollutant by the United Nations EnvironmentProgramme (UNEP) and the International Labor Health Heavy Metal Committee.Long-term exposure to heavy metal cadmium would do harm to the internal organs ofhuman’s body, especially it would be bad for kidneys and livers, which are the targetorgan of cadmium. Cadmium will mainly damage the glomerular of kidneys,involving the proximal tubules. Besides, Cadmium can also cause osteoporosis,Osteomalacia and fractures. During the early20thcentury, the prevalence of the Itaiitaidisease was mainly brought out by cadmium. This research aims at doing theexposure and risk assessments based on the inspection of cadmium in molluscsreferring to the CAC Food risk analysis theory.Molluscs are important Marine food in China, and they are very importantaquatic product in the residents’ daily diet. The molluscs production in2010was11333329tons, making up21.09%of the total aquatic products output. As thedevelopment of the industry and economy, the coastal area receive many sewage andindustrial waste water, which cause tremendous effect to the marine ecosystem everyyear. Molluscs are widely spread all over the ocean, and the filter feeding behaviorleads to the heavy enrichment of heavy metals such as cadmium. Thus, it is influencedgreatly by the environment and cadmium is always found out in molluscs. Accordingto this instance, we collected the data of different sea areas from2007to2010, and wealso did some inspections of cadmium in molluscs gathering from some differentcities. The valid data was totally up to1044.During this research, we use the Crystal Ball software based on the theory ofMonte Carlo proposed by CAC to get the exposure of the cadmium, which is muchlower than the PTMI established by JECFA. The HQ of the risk assessment in the95,97.5and99.5percentiles are0.510,0.662and0.888, which are far below1. It showsthat there is extremely low or even no risk by having molluscs for the ingestion ofCadmium.Our country is aquatic superpower and the standards of molluscs should beacting on the international convention. However, our national standards are muchstrict than other countries and regions, which makes it adverse to the exportation ofaquatic products. We should modify our standards as soon as possible in the premisethat it will not harm human health.