Abstract
Tremendous effort has been devoted to understanding the mechanism of methylmercury (MeHg) bioaccumulation in the aquatic food webs in North America and Europe because fish consumption is generally believed to be the main exposure pathway of MeHg to humans. Hg bioaccumulation in terrestrial food chains have received little attention and assumed to be of minor importance. However, elevated concentrations of total mercury (THg) as well as MeHg in rice have been reported from Hg contaminated areas (e.g., MeHg reach 144 μg kg−1 (Horvat et al. 2003) and 174 μg kg−1 (Qiu et al. 2008)). In such contaminated areas, rice grains have been observed with high ratios of MeHg to THg (e.g., average as 45 % (Horvat et al. 2003)). Moreover, Feng et al. suggested that rice consumption is the major MeHg exposure pathway for a population in a Hg mining area in Guizhou, China (Feng et al. 2008).
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Zhang, H. (2014). Biogeochemical Cycles of Mercury in Soil-Rice System. In: Impacts of Selenium on the Biogeochemical Cycles of Mercury in Terrestrial Ecosystems in Mercury Mining Areas. Springer Theses. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54919-9_8
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