Study on potential transfrnce of pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hidrocarbons from feed to farmed fish

Abstract

Throughout the last decades the huge demand on fish supply has led the world fish stocks to be over exploited. Aquaculture has appeared to be the solution for this situation, becoming the essential way of supplying the demand of fish products. However, the traditional aquaculture feed has been composed mainly of fish raw materials. At this moment, one of the main goals of aquaculture is to reduce the utilisation of marine origin ingredients in aquafeeding and to substitute them by vegetable origin material. Those novel diet compositions could introduce new and unexpected undesirables in feed composition, and therefore, arrive to fish organism. The investigation was devoted to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and pesticides because of their widespread presence and also motivated by recent European Commission regulations for PAHs and pesticides in foodstuffs. So, the objective of this investigation was to assess the transference of any polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon or pesticide present in some diets to fish tissue. For accomplishing this objective, high resolution screening techniques were used: gas chromatography coupled to hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry with atmospheric pressure chemical ionisation (GC-(APCI)-QTOF MS) and, ultra high pressure liquid chromatography coupled to hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry with electrospray source of ionisation (UHPLC-(ESI)-QTOF MS). Four PAHs (fluoranthene, naphthalene, phenanthrene and pyrene) and three pesticides (ethoxyquin, ethoxyquin dimer and pirimiphos-methyl) were present in both feed and fish tissue in all examined diets.