Abstract:
Santa Rosa Island community members derive their income and livelihoods from bioaquatic resources, principally bivalves of the genus Anadara, both for subsistence use and commercial purposes. Bivalve mollusks have a sedentary lifestyle and feed by filtering water, meaning they absorb all surrounding substances, including harmful elements like toxic metals. This study aimed to analyze different-sized samples of Anadara tuberculosa and Anadara similis, sediment, and Rhizophora mangle leaves to determine their total amount of cadmium, lead, and chromium as a first approach to the evaluation of the health risk related to the consumption of bivalves. For both species from four sampling sites, the results revealed metal concentrations in the bivalvesbetween0.211and0.948mgkg−1,0.038,and0.730mgkg−1,and0.067and 0.923 mg·kg−1 for Cd, Cr, and Pb, respectively. The calculated potential risk (>1) for cadmium, considering all body weights, showed a high health risk for consumers. In the caseoflead,theresultsshowedahighhealthriskinchildren.Therewasnoriskfoundfor chromium. For sediments, the mean values were 2.14, 29.99, and 12.37 mg·kg−1 and for the Rhizophora mangle leaves were 2.23, 4.22, and 3.35 mg·kg−1 for Cd, Cr, and Pb, respectively. These results did not show a relation with the metal content in bivalves.
