Organism individuals were thawed at room temperature and dissected carefully to obtain soft tissues/muscles samples for shellfish, shrimp, crab and wild fish and, both muscles and whole body samples for farmed fish, respectively. Muscle is the most important organ in terms of human exposure. Portions of the organism samples and sediment samples were freeze-dried and homogenized for determination of Cu, Zn, Pb and Cd. Sediment samples for analysis of the metals were oven-dried at 105 C, disaggregated and ground in an agate mill to pass a screen with a nominal size of 100 mesh. Water samples were filtered using GF/F filters (nominal pore size 0.7 mm; Whatman International, Maidstone,England) to separate suspended particulate matter and filtrates.
All glasswarewas cleaned by soaking in 10% HNO3 (v/v) for at
least two days, followed by soaking and rinsing with deionized
water.