A simulated in vitro gastrointestinal digestion was applied to evaluate the oral bioaccessibility of
cadmium, lead, copper and manganese from shrimp and sea bass samples collected from a coastal area
of Bandon Bay, Surat Thani, Thailand. The method measures the fraction of a metal which is
solubilized from the sample under simulated gastric and intestinal conditions. Both gastric and intestinal
extracted solutions as well as the microwave digested residue (for total metal analysis) were analyzed
for heavy metals by Inductively Coupled Plasma - Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES).
Moderate bioaccessibility of copper (53.1-65.6%) and moderate to relatively high bioaccessibility of
manganese (47.3-72.8%) have been found for shrimp and sea bass. Whereas, the bioaccessibility of
cadmium and lead was non-detectable for all samples due to the small amounts of the heavy metals in
the samples (less than 0.010 and 0.160 mg/kg dry weight for cadmium and lead, respectively).