AND CARMEN CÁMARA1,*

Mercury (Hg) and selenium (Se) determinations were carried out to evaluate human exposure to those elements through fish consumption in Spain and Portugal. Atomic fluorescence spectroscopy (AFS) was applied in a cold vapor mode for total mercury quantification and was also hyphenated to gas chromatography (GC) to achieve the speciation of organomercurial species in fish samples. The results obtained show the highest concentration of Hg in swordfish and tuna (0.47 ± 0.02 and 0.31 ± 0.01 µg g–1, respectively), and a much lower concentration in sardine, mackerel shad, and octopus (0.048 ± 0.002, 0.033 ± 0.001, and 0.024 ± 0.001 µg g–1, respectively). The determination of alkyl mercury compounds revealed that 93–98 % of mercury in the fish the three fish species with higher mercury content. Total selenium concentration was high in sardine, swordfish, and tuna (0.43 ± 0.02, 0.47 ± 0.02, and 0.92 ± 0.01 µg g–1, respectively), but low in mack-erel shad and octopus (0.26 ± 0.01 and 0.13 ± 0.01 µg g–1, respectively). Spe-ciation of selenium compounds was done by high-performance liqui