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Lead Levels in Wild Boar Meat Sauce (Ragù) Sold on the Italian Market

Game meat is endowed with excellent nutritional value, but it may also be a possible source of harmful substances, such as mycotoxins and heavy metals. In particular, several studies showed that lead fragments from hunting ammunition are able to represent a residual contaminant in the meat of wild b...

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Autores principales: Lenti, Antonio, Menozzi, Alessandro, Fedrizzi, Giorgio, Menotta, Simonetta, Iemmi, Tiziano, Galletti, Giorgio, Serventi, Paolo, Bertini, Simone
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8069738/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33920128
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18083989
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author Lenti, Antonio
Menozzi, Alessandro
Fedrizzi, Giorgio
Menotta, Simonetta
Iemmi, Tiziano
Galletti, Giorgio
Serventi, Paolo
Bertini, Simone
author_facet Lenti, Antonio
Menozzi, Alessandro
Fedrizzi, Giorgio
Menotta, Simonetta
Iemmi, Tiziano
Galletti, Giorgio
Serventi, Paolo
Bertini, Simone
author_sort Lenti, Antonio
collection PubMed
description Game meat is endowed with excellent nutritional value, but it may also be a possible source of harmful substances, such as mycotoxins and heavy metals. In particular, several studies showed that lead fragments from hunting ammunition are able to represent a residual contaminant in the meat of wild boars or deer, representing a possible source of lead absorption. Even though wild boar meat consumption in Italy is rather limited, this meat could also be present in very popular Italian recipes, such as the typical meat sauce called ragù. We evaluated the lead levels in 48 samples (three different batches for each of the 16 brands) of ready-to-eat wild boar meat ragù sold on the Italian market in food stores and online distribution with the inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) technique. A high variability was found in the lead levels detected in the samples, with a median lead level of 0.10 mg/kg (0.01–18.3 mg/kg) and some of the samples showing very high lead concentrations. Since no intake level of lead is considered completely safe, and maximum levels for game meat have so far not been established, a greater attention on the risks to consumers’ health related to the presence of this heavy metal in game meat is recommended.
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spelling pubmed-80697382021-04-26 Lead Levels in Wild Boar Meat Sauce (Ragù) Sold on the Italian Market Lenti, Antonio Menozzi, Alessandro Fedrizzi, Giorgio Menotta, Simonetta Iemmi, Tiziano Galletti, Giorgio Serventi, Paolo Bertini, Simone Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Game meat is endowed with excellent nutritional value, but it may also be a possible source of harmful substances, such as mycotoxins and heavy metals. In particular, several studies showed that lead fragments from hunting ammunition are able to represent a residual contaminant in the meat of wild boars or deer, representing a possible source of lead absorption. Even though wild boar meat consumption in Italy is rather limited, this meat could also be present in very popular Italian recipes, such as the typical meat sauce called ragù. We evaluated the lead levels in 48 samples (three different batches for each of the 16 brands) of ready-to-eat wild boar meat ragù sold on the Italian market in food stores and online distribution with the inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) technique. A high variability was found in the lead levels detected in the samples, with a median lead level of 0.10 mg/kg (0.01–18.3 mg/kg) and some of the samples showing very high lead concentrations. Since no intake level of lead is considered completely safe, and maximum levels for game meat have so far not been established, a greater attention on the risks to consumers’ health related to the presence of this heavy metal in game meat is recommended. MDPI 2021-04-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8069738/ /pubmed/33920128 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18083989 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Lenti, Antonio
Menozzi, Alessandro
Fedrizzi, Giorgio
Menotta, Simonetta
Iemmi, Tiziano
Galletti, Giorgio
Serventi, Paolo
Bertini, Simone
Lead Levels in Wild Boar Meat Sauce (Ragù) Sold on the Italian Market
title Lead Levels in Wild Boar Meat Sauce (Ragù) Sold on the Italian Market
title_full Lead Levels in Wild Boar Meat Sauce (Ragù) Sold on the Italian Market
title_fullStr Lead Levels in Wild Boar Meat Sauce (Ragù) Sold on the Italian Market
title_full_unstemmed Lead Levels in Wild Boar Meat Sauce (Ragù) Sold on the Italian Market
title_short Lead Levels in Wild Boar Meat Sauce (Ragù) Sold on the Italian Market
title_sort lead levels in wild boar meat sauce (ragù) sold on the italian market
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8069738/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33920128
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18083989
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