Heavy Metals and Bacteria Contamination in Corbicula fluminea (“Etak”) Tissue Collected at Selling Point

Corbfcula fluminea is a freshwater mollusc species with the local name of “etak” and it is popular snack among the Kelantan’s people. The process of preparing “etak” is usually by traditional smoking method whereby the smoked “etak“ are called as “etak salai”. The stalls for selling “etak” usually found nearby the main road or at the fresh market and the “etak” are left exposed. So, this was believed to contaminate with bacteria and heavy metals. This study is focusing on analyzing the heavy metals and bacteria content in smoked “etak” sold at the stall. The determination of heavy metals was carried out utilizing flame atomic absorption spectrophotometer (FAAS). For the determination of the microbial contaminant in “etak” tissue, the extractions of DNA was canied out and for the DNA quality and quantity checking were tested by using NanoDropTM Spectrophotometer. The concentration of dry weight (mg/g) of Cr, Mn, Zn and Cu were under the permissible limits, however the fresh “etak” contains higher concentrations of these heavy metals than the smoked “etak" sold at the stall. S0, it could be suggested that, marinating and smoking process are able to eliminate some of the heavy metals. For bacteria content, all the samples that have been tested were considered as non-contaminated, however the fresh “etak” samples were less polluted by the bacteria. So, it could be suggested that, “etak” was contaminated with bacteria during selling.