Dear Ronnie
I do not know if there are any standards for formaldehyde in fish or fishery
products. My guess is that there are none, but you could check by consulting
the food regulations of some countries.
The second part of your message asks for information on levels of 'naturally
occurring' formaldehyde in fish and fish products. What do you mean by
'naturally occurring'? Formaldehyde does not occur 'naturally' in fish, but
formaldehyde can be detected in some fishery products. To my knowledge,
smoked fish contains formaldehyde deposited from the smoke; formaldehyde is
formed during frozen storage of some species of fish by enzymatic cleavage
of trimethylamine oxide; and formaldehyde can be detected in dried fish,
presumably again from cleavage of TMAO. There is a published literature on
these topics - very thin I recall for dried fish - which you could access
from Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts, though that on formaldehyde
in smoked fish and dried fish I think dates from the 1960' and earlier.
The UK's MAFF has published Food Surveillance Information Sheets, Number 157
September 1998, Survey of chemical migration from can coatings into food and
beverages - 1. Formaldehyde. You will find it on the Web. Formaldehyde was
not detected in samples of canned fish.
Peter Howgate
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