Some toxic and essential trace metals in cattle from the northern part of Poland

The concentrations of mercury, cadmium, lead, copper, manganese, zinc and iron have been determined in muscle (meat), liver and kidney of cattle slaughtered in the northern part of Poland between 1987 and 1991. The method of measurement was cold vapour flameless AAS for mercury and flame AAS for other metals. The arithmetic mean weighted concentrations obtained related to wet-weight for muscles, liver and kidneys of cattle were 1.2, 4.2 and 11 micrograms kg-1 for mercury; 6, 120 and 610 micrograms kg-1 for cadmium; 40, 160 and 210 micrograms kg-1 for lead; 1.2, 29 and 5.6 mg kg-1 for copper; 0.11, 1.8 and 0.93 mg kg-1 for manganese; 34, 43 and 22 mg kg-1 for zinc and 23, 44 and 72 mg kg-1 for iron, respectively. No clear trends with time of toxic trace metals have been found in bovine muscle and edible organs during the period studied. The results obtained are reviewed and discussed with the data reported for muscle, liver and kidneys of cattle in Poland from other studies.