Abstract
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a promising biomonitoring approach with the potential to provide direct information on human intake and exposure to food contaminants and environmental chemicals. The aim of this study was to apply WBE while employing the normalization method for exploring human exposure to selected mycotoxins according to population biomarker 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA). This type of normalization technique has been previously used to detect various other compounds. However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study tracking human exposure to mycotoxins. A sensitive analytical methodology was developed to achieve reliable quantification of deoxynivalenol, enniatins, and beauvericin in wastewater (WW) samples. The applicability of the method was evaluated by testing 29 WW samples collected at WW treatment plants in Latvia. With frequency of detection greater than 86%, enniatins B, B1, A, and A1 were revealed in WW samples. The estimated total daily intake for enniatins was in the range of 1.8–27.6 µg/day per person. Free deoxynivalenol (DON) was determined in all analysed WW samples. Based on the average 5-HIAA excretion level and the determined 5-HIAA content in the samples, the intake of DON by the human population of Riga was estimated at 325 ng/kg b.w. day.
Highlights
The occurrence of mycotoxins in food presents a global problem
This may be related to the richness of effluent matrix and the limited capacity of the solid phase extraction (SPE)
It was confirmed that the sample volume of 666 mL of sample is optimal, and for simplicity, 500 mL of sample was further used
Summary
The occurrence of mycotoxins in food presents a global problem. the risks of acute poisoning are low, there is a definite concern about chronic low doses that can lead to cancer and other diseases in the long term [1,2,3]. There are different methods for human exposure assessment, which may be based on the analysis of contamination levels in food and dietary surveys (indirect methods) [7,8] or direct human biomonitoring studies (HBM), including the analysis of food contaminants in human urine or blood. Both types of studies are very time-consuming, expensive, and require the recruitment of numerous respondents to participate in the studies. There are difficulties associated with the extrapolation of individual results from those studies to the targeted population, since the analysis of some matrices may provide only limited understanding regarding the exposure to a substance, related only to the specific time of collection
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