Health Risk Assessment and Comparative Studies on Some Fish Species Cultured in Traditional and Biofloc Fish Farms.

ABSTRACT

The present study aimed at (a) determining the concentration of macro-minerals and toxic metals in fish species collected from biofloc and traditional fish farms; (b) assessing the contribution of macro-minerals to our daily diet; and (c) evaluating the health risks of children and adults based on the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) deterministic model. Significantly higher concentrations of macro-minerals and significantly lower levels of toxic metals (at < 0.05 level) were found in most of the biofloc fish species compared to the market fish samples. The values of the target hazard quotient (THQ) were less than 1.0 for all individual trace metals in all species, which indicated that there were no noncarcinogenic health risks. Furthermore, the value of the hazard index (HI) in three samples of Tilapia from the market exceeded the recommended value of 1.0, while all samples from the biofloc fish tank were within the maximum tolerable limit, which suggested that the daily consumption of Tilapia fishes from the market may result in considerable harmful effects. Target cancer risk (TCR) for Pb in all of the studied samples was within the range of 10-6 and 10-4, hence the adults and children would not experience any kinds of carcinogenic effects. The result obtained from this comparative study revealed that the consumption of fish species from both local market and biofloc fish farms was almost safe, but the value of TCR in Pb was higher in traditional fish samples than that of biofloc tanks, hence fish samples from biofloc farms were more suitable for consumption.