Abstract

Food poisoning accident occurred on May, 1996 at Oepo, Geoje County, Kyeongnam Province, Korea, and two persons were died within a few hours after ingestion of the soup prepared with wild mussel, Mytilus edulis, harvested on the sea rock. Paralytic shellfish poisons (PSP) were elucidated as the responsible toxins for the food poisons accident because the wild mussels caught after three days at the near place from the accident contained high toxicity of PSP ranged $650\~1000MU/g$ of edible meat by mouse bioassay. Gonyautoxin-1+4 $(42.7\%)$ and C1+C2 $(40.0\%)$ were detected as the major toxins in the mussels by fluorometric HPLC method. Although, the poison extracted out with drip during freezing and thawing, and the toxicity gradually decreased by boiling for 20 minutes, over 30 MU/g of toxins remained in the soup and meat, which indicated that they could be able to make food poisoning.

Keywords

• paralytic shellfish poison (PSP);
• Mytilus edulis;
• food poisoning;
• gonyautoxin;
• mussel