Investigating toxic metal levels in popular edible fishes from the South Durban basin: implications for public health and food security Sanjeev Debipersadh & Timothy Sibanda & Ramganesh Selvarajan & Richard Naidoo Received: 16 January 2018 /Accepted: 12 July 2018 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 Abstract Contamination of the ocean by heavy metals may have ecosystem-wide implications because they are toxic even if present in trace levels, and the relative ease of their bioaccumulation by marine organisms may af- fect human health, primarily through consumption of contaminated fish. We evaluated metal concentrations in six different popular edible fish species and estimated the potential health risks from consumption of contam- inated fish. There was no correlation between fish length and average metal accumulation although the fish spe- cies tended to accumulate significantly more Al and Zn (P < 0.05) than any of the other metals. Significantly higher Mn concentrations were found in fish gills com- pared to other body parts in all fish species. Bronze seabream, Catface rockcod, and Slinger seabream had significantly higher mean Cr concentration in the liver than in either the tissues or gills. The highest concentration of Zn in fleshy tissue was in Horse mack- erel (56.71 μgg −1 ) followed by Bronze seabream (31.07 μgg −1 ). Al levels ranged from 5.6 μgg −1 in Atlantic mackerel to 35.04 μgg −1 in Horse mackerel tissue while Cu and Cr concentrations were highest in the tissues of Horse mackerel (6.83 and 1.81 μgg −1 , respectively) followed by Santer seabream (3.15; 1.09 μgg −1 ) and Bronze seabream (3.09; 1.30 μgg −1 ), respectively. The highest tissue concentration of Mn was detected in Bronze seabream (8.23 μgg −1 ) followed by Catface rockcod (6.05 μgg −1 ) and Slinger seabream (5.21 μgg −1 ) while Pb concentrations ranged from a high of 8.44 μgg −1 in Horse mackerel to 1.09 μgg −1 in Catface rockcod. However, the estimated potential health risks from fish consumption as determined by the target hazard quotient (THQ) and hazard index (HI) were significantly lower than 1, implying that metals were not present in sufficiently high quantities to be of any health and/or food and security concern in the studied fishes. Keywords Heavy metal . Marine fish . Food security . Public health . Indian Ocean Introduction Because of its vast expanse and depth, it was once thought that the effects of dumping trash and litter into the ocean would only have minimal conse- quences (EnviroEditor 2015). However, the effects Environ Monit Assess (2018) 190:476 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-018-6862-5 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-018-6862-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. S. Debipersadh : R. Naidoo Department of Environmental Sciences, UNISA Florida Campus, Christiaan De Wet/Pioneer Dr, P.O Box 1710, Florida South Africa T. Sibanda (*) Department of Biological Sciences, University of Namibia, Private Bag 13301, 340 Mandume Ndemufayo Ave, Pionierspark, Windhoek, Namibia e-mail: timsibanda@gmail.com R. Selvarajan Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of the Free State, QwaQwa Campus, Private Bag X 13, Phuthaditjhaba 9866, South Africa