SUMMARY
The quantity of mineral nutrients in diet should be balanced to promote optimumresponse in humans’ metabolism and the contamination with heavy metals must be monitored, in order toprovide safety foodstuff for consumers. The aim of this study was to present a short characterization ofheavy metals contamination and mineral nutrients concentration in different poultry liver samples andtheir possible effect on food safety. Five collective commercial poultry liver sample and 15 individualliver samples with macroscopic lesions were submitted to analysis. After microwave digestion, heavymetals (Cd, Pb, As) and mineral nutrients (Fe, Zn, Cu, Cr, Ni, Se) were determined by ICP-MS. For Hgquantification, DMA was used. The results were presented as mean values and statistical analyses wereperformed with SPSS software. The concentrations for heavy metals ranged from 0.013 to 0.058 mg/kgCd and 0.04 to 2.77μg/kg Hg. For all samples, As and Pb were under the limit of quantification, 0.009mg/kg and 0.006 mg/kg, respectively. For mineral nutrients, concentrations ranged from 41.8 to 109.6mg/kg Fe; 0.009 to 0.033 mg/kg Cr; 1.22 to 4.71 mg/kg Cu; 0.37 to 0.59 mg/kg Se; 20.9 to 61.3 mg/kgZn; 0.006 to 0.01 mg/kg Ni. All concentrations for heavy metals were under the maximum tolerance level.The comparison between commercial samples and those with macroscopic lesions showed that for Cd,Hg, Fe, Ni and Zn the results are not significantly different (P>0.05), while Cr, Cu, Se concentrations aresignificantly different (P < 0.05). This may illustrate different accumulation capacity of heavy metals andmineral nutrients for normal and with lesions poultry liver.