RISK ASSESSMENT OF LEAD IN TILAPIA NILOTICA FISH FROM DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS OF EGYPT

Lead is among the heavy metals and it is one of the highly toxic metals, which is recognized in most countries. Lead accumulates in fish. The present investigation provides information about the concentrations of lead in Tilapia nilotica fish meat from industrial, heavy traffic and rural areas in Egypt. Results indicated that lead concentrations in different samples are quite variable among the collected samples from areas under investigation. These results were confirmed by statistical analysis, which highly significant differences (p?0.05) of lead content were observed between the concentration of lead in different samples from industrial and traffic areas compared with rural areas. On the other hand, no significant differences (p?0.05) were observed between the lead levels in fish samples from industrial areas and traffic areas. The highest mean levels of lead, 2.6782 and 2.6596 mg/kg were detected in industrial and traffic areas, respectively. However, the lowest mean lead level (1.4811 mg/kg) was detected in rural areas samples. It can be recommended that monitoring and evaluation of lead levels in fish at regular intervals and maintaining data base is very important.