PBB levels in fish from the Baltic and North seas and in selected food products from Poland

Recently, a significant amount of attention has been devoted to the determination of polybrominated biphenyls in food and the environment. In this study, PBB contamination of fish from the North and Baltic Seas, with a special focus on samples from Poland and France, was investigated. North Sea fish like salmon, herring, scarp, gilthead seabream and grey gurnard were collected from a French fish market. Baltic Sea fish like salmon, tunny, trout, herring, and freshwater fish such as carp were purchased from a Polish fish market. Cod livers in oil were also analyzed in this study. As additional food samples, butter, pork fat and beef fat were tested. Concentrations of PBBs in North Sea fish (except herring) were higher than in fish from the Baltic Sea. The highest total PBB concentration was measured in scarp muscle tissue (635 ± 107 pg g−1 wet weight), and the lowest was in carp samples (0.567 ± 0.245 pg g−1 wet weight). The PBB content in tunny oil samples was below the detection limits (0.45–1.05 pg g−1 fat). Our study also demonstrated that PBBs may bioaccumulate in the liver, where PBB concentrations were 2116 ± 351 pg g−1 wet weight and 841 ± 147 pg g−1 wet weight. In fish species from Poland, the most dominant congeners were tetrabromobiphenyls, followed by pentabromobiphenyls and hexabromobiphenyls. In some species of fish from the North Sea, the most dominant groups were hexabromobiphenyls and tetrabromobiphenyls. Although the relative abundances of structurally known and unknown isomers varied from species to species, all fish (except tunny) were contaminated with PBBs.