Food contamination with polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxins in Belgium. Effects on the body burden

Transition rates from air into food as well as equilibrium concentrations in air and critical foods were determined for tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, benzene and toluene. From these data, maximum concentrations of the four substances in air were estimated that keep contamination of critical foods at an acceptable level. A simple and rapid method allowed us to determine the risk of food contamination from the air, e.g. in shops and kitchens, by the analysis of the air. Estimations showed that concentrations in the air of shops should not exceed 1 mg/m3 if tetrachloroethylene concentrations in foods are limited to 100 micrograms/kg (slightly higher concentrations can be accepted for the other three compounds); in kitchens of restaurants and households, even 0.3 mg/m3 cause the target concentration to be exceeded rather frequently If the limit in foods is 50 micrograms/kg, recommended maximum concentrations in air are 0.5 and 0.15 mg/m3. The data also shows that the recommended limits for concentrations in air conflict with the accepted emission limits: If emission at the accepted limit occurs near shops or households, contamination of foods far exceed that considered as tolerable.

What Are the Current Findings Concerning Arsenic in Foods?

BackgroundFast food consumption is associated with biomarkers of ortho-phthalates exposures. However, the chemical content of fast food is unknown; certain ortho-phthalates (i.e., di-n-butyl phthalate (DnBP) and di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP)) have been phased out and replaced with other plasticizers (e.g., dioctyl terephthalate (DEHT)).ObjectiveWe conducted a preliminary study to examine ortho-phthalate and replacement plasticizer concentrations in foods and food handling gloves from U.S. fast food restaurants.MethodsWe obtained hamburgers, fries, chicken nuggets, chicken burritos, cheese pizza (n = 64 food samples) and gloves (n = 3) from restaurants and analyzed them for 11 chemicals using gas chromatography mass spectrometry.ResultsWe found DEHT at the highest concentrations in both foods (n = 19; median = 2510 µg/kg; max = 12,400 µg/kg) and gloves (n = 3; range: 28–37% by weight). We detected DnBP and DEHP in 81% and 70% of food samples, respectively. Median DEHT concentrations were significantly higher in burritos than hamburgers (6000 µg/kg vs. 2200 µg/kg; p < 0.0001); DEHT was not detected in fries. Cheese pizza had the lowest levels of most chemicals.SignificanceTo our knowledge, these are the first measurements of DEHT in food. Our preliminary findings suggest that ortho-phthalates remain ubiquitous and replacement plasticizers may be abundant in fast food meals.Impact statementA selection of popular fast food items sampled in this study contain detectable levels of replacement plasticizers and concerning ortho-phthalates. In addition, food handling gloves contain replacement plasticizers, which may be a source of food contamination. These results, if confirmed, may inform individual and regulatory exposure reduction strategies.

Chloronaphthalenes are dioxin-like environmental and food contaminants that for many years have undergone diffusion from dispersed emission sources of various types on a global scale. When released into ambient air like many other semivolatile organohalogen compounds, chloronaphthalenes undergo various processes and pathways including sequestering by plant vegetation and biota. Recently available data indicate that sequestering rates of chloronaphthalenes by plant biomass and including edible plants as well as concentrations in food sources of plant origin can be greater than was earlier predicted. Additionally, it become known very recently that in some highly industrialized countries such as Japan, Canada and the UK, the technical chloronaphthalene mixtures are still a subject of industrial and commercial interest, even if such activities are illegal. Recent achievements in HRGC-HRMS have enabled elucidation and quantification of the chloronaphthalene congener composition in environmental matrices, food sources and technical mixtures, their persistency, environmental fate, accumulation in biota and potential for food chain biomagnification. However, at the same time this raised questions regarding human exposure to these compounds. By the late 1990s, these developments added to the relatively rapidly growing knowledge on these compounds and especially individual congener properties such as thermodynamic and physicochemical features and toxicity. Multistage fractionation has recently enabled routine congener-specific quantification of tetra- to octachloronaphthalene in various matrices. This paper reviews the literature on chloronaphthalenes as food chain contaminants and covers their origin, physicochemical properties, toxicity, environmental concentrations and persistency, and homologue group and congener composition in various matrices. The review also covers distribution in environmental compartments and subsequent fate and migration to food sources, as well as the magnitude of dietary intake and human body concentrations. Data on chloronaphthalene residues in food, however, are still scare, an exception being seafood sources and recently available data from Spain on their concentrations in staple foods and dietary intake.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have spread throughout the global environment to threaten human health and damage ecosystems, with evidence of POPs contamination in wildlife, human blood, and breast milk documented...

Human exposure to dioxins from food, 1999–2002

Human dietary intake of organohalogen contaminants at e-waste recycling sites in Eastern China

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a mycotoxin with nephrotoxic, genotoxic and carcinogenic properties produced by Penicillium and Aspergillus moulds under different climatic conditions. Humans and animals are exposed to this compound mainly via ingestion of contaminated food. In Croatia, research on mycotoxins focused on OTA when the mycotoxin theory of endemic nephropathy (EN) was postulated. Ochratoxin A was more frequent and at higher concentration in foods from EN than those from the control regions. Subsequently, OTA concentrations were determined in some commodities intended for human consumption such as maize, wheat, beans and wine. Samples from all parts of Croatia were analyzed and OTA was found in all types of commodities. It was frequently found together with other mycotoxins (fumonisin B1, fumonisin B2 and zearalenone). In general, OTA concentration in foods from Croatia is low, but the frequency of positive samples shows considerable variations from year to year depending also on sampling location. Although low levels of OTA were found in a large proportion of analyzed food samples, its persistent co-occurrence with other significant mycotoxins should raise serious public health concerns as there interactions may be synergistic or additive in causing toxicity in humans and animals. There is need to establish control measures through which such contaminations in foods can be managed.

The restrictions and the concerted action of the global ban on the use and presence of tributyltin (TBT) in marine applications to protect ecosystems in the marine environment in 2008 was mainly based on the economic impact on shellfish industries and the dramatic extinction of local mollusc populations in the past. In contrast to the vast datasets on effects on molluscs, the knowledge on impacts on species from other taxa remained in the uncertain until almost two decades ago. The assumption on a long-term TBT-mediated pernicious metabolic bottom-up regulation of the crustacean Crangon crangon population was provoked by the outcome of an EU-project ‘Sources, Consumer Exposure and Risks of Organotin Contamination in Seafood’. This study reported high TBT body burdens in C. crangon in 2003, at the start of the transition period to the global ban. Experimental research on the TBT impact in C. crangon focused on agonistic interference with natural ecdysteroid hormones at the metabolic pathways regulating growth and reproduction and the biogeochemical distribution of the chemical. In this paper, metabolic, topical and population-relevant biological endpoints in C. crangon and other crustaceans are evaluated in relation to the temporal and spatial trends on TBT’s occurrence and distribution in the field during and after the introduction of the tributyltin restrictions and endocrine-related incidents. Arguments are forwarded to relate the German Bight incident on growth and reproduction failure in the C. crangon population, despite the lack of direct evidence, to the pernicious impact of tributyltin in 1990/91 and previous years. The extreme occurrence of TBT in C. crangon from other parts of the southern North Sea and evidence on the high body burdens as dose metrics of exposure also feeds the suspicion on detrimental impacts in those areas. This paper further demonstrates the complexity of distinguishing and assessing the individual roles of unrelated stressors on a population in an integrated evaluation at the ecosystem level.

IntroductionBranched chain fatty acids (BCFA) are a class of primarily saturated fatty acids (FA) with a methyl branch on the carbon chain. We recently showed that BCFA are constituents of the term newborn infant's gut, and feeding neonatal rats with a rat formula with BCFA of the type found in US food altered gut microbiota and reduced the incidence of Necrotizing Enterocolitis. Thus, BCFA may have beneficial effects on proper gut development and function.Our aim was to analyze the levels and distribution of BCFA in common foods consumed in the US, and to estimate the amount of BCFA intake from these foods. Because BCFA have been reported in cow's milk and are a major component of bacterial membranes, we were specifically interested in BCFA from dairy‐based and fermented foods.MethodsFood samples were purchased from local stores. FA analysis was carried out using routine methods.ResultsBCFA concentration in ruminant foods ranged from 1.4–2.7%w/w. Intake of BCFA per capita/d from foods was about 400mg/d. If Americans consumed the recommended amount of servings from the dairy food group, daily BCFA intake would increase.ConclusionsThis is the first report of BCFA concentrations in American foods. The consumption of BCFA per capita per day is higher than the consumption of bioactive n‐3 FA. The prominence of BCFA in the US food supply and their bioactivity strongly suggest that BCFA health effects should be studied.

The concentrations of dioxins in fish oil and fish meal were determined with accelerated solvent extraction, using a novel integrated carbon fractionation extraction cell followed by a miniturized multilayer silica column and bioanalysis on a recently-developed chemically-activated fluorescent gene expression cell bioassay. The developed method allows for simultaneous gravimetric lipid weight determination, which was shown for both matrices under study (about 100% lipid recovery of each sample). Initial results practically meet the quality criteria on screening methods for control of dioxins in food and feedstuffs laid down in the EU Commission Directives 2002/69/EC (food) and 2002/70/EC (feed). This demonstrates that the developed method can be used as a screening tool for monitoring dioxins in food and feed after some additional improvements and testing on a greater number of matrices.

Environmental risk management is important concept for taking better countermeasures, in particular the estimation of sources and mass abundances are requisite to reduce the risk from persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the environment and make administrative services more efficient. POPs such as the Dioxins is toxic, resist degradation, bio-accumulate and “Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants” was adopted in 2001. The Convention prescribes that each party should implement, for example, measures to reduce or eliminate releases from unintentional production. Therefore the grasp of the present status by dioxins pollutions released from unintentional production in the past is important.In this study, we conducted a survey on the concentration and congener information of dioxins in samples of paddy soils by three layers, saved samples, rivers, its environmental investigation, and then presumed their sources and mass abundances in Kanagawa prefecture, Japan. The concentration of dioxins was 93 pg-TEQ/g in first layer (0∼15 cm) of paddy soils, 53 pg-TEQ/g in second layer (15∼30 cm), and 3.1 pg-TEQ/g in third layer (30∼45 cm). In order to identify the dioxin source in the first layer of paddy soil, the multiple regression analysis was applied. It was found major two sources: pentachlorophenol (PCP), and chloronitrophen (CNP) amounts to about 90 %. PCP and CNP contained dioxin as impurity and were used extensively as paddy field herbicides in Japan in 1960s ∼ 1970s. The outflow of dioxins from paddy soil was estimated to be 2.97μg-TEQ/10a. Compared with the amount remaining in paddy soils 0.0151 % of dioxins have been flowed out from paddy field at 1 year. The concentration of dioxins from preserved samples showed that its half-lives in paddy soils were calculated to 11∼45 years. Further, dioxins concentrationin Zenba river estimated to be 2.2 pg-TEQ/L in irrigation period, 0.54 pg-TEQ/L in non-irrigation period, and 0.99 pg-TEQ/L in annual average concentration that considered direct influence of paddy field by the irrigation.

To improve understanding of human background exposure to dioxins, the influence of cooking on dioxin concentrations in food has received much attention. Studies have focused on changes in the distribution of dioxins that originate from raw foods. However, the possibility of dioxin formation during cooking has been neglected. In this study, cooking experiments were designed to investigate the generation of dioxins during cooking at high temperature and with flavorings containing organic chlorine. Solid, liquid, and gas phase samples were collected during cooking. The results indicate that dioxins can be generated during some cooking processes, such as burning, or when cooking with reactive organic chlorides, and the dioxins are more likely to be present in the smoke (gas phase) than the edible portion (solid and liquid phases). Thus, more attention should be given to cooking of raw foods and organic chlorine-containing flavorings at high temperature. Maintaining good ventilation during cooking is also necessary to reduce human exposure risk to dioxins.

Background: Thallium is a metal that is ubiquitous in our natural environment. Despite its potential for high toxicity, thallium is understudied and not regulated in food. The California Department of Public Health was alerted to a household cluster of elevated urine thallium levels noted among a mother (peak 5.6 µg/g creatinine; adult reference: ≤0.4 µg/g creatinine) and her three young children (peak 10.5 µg/g creatinine; child reference: ≤0.8 µg/g creatinine). Objectives: This case report identifies questions raised after a public health investigation linked a household’s thallium exposure to a commercially available food product. We provide an overview of the public health investigation. We then explore concerns, such as gaps in toxicological data and limited surveillance of thallium in the food supply, which make management of individual and population exposure risks challenging. Methods: We highlight findings from a cross-agency investigation, including a household exposure survey, sampling of possible environmental and dietary exposures (ICP-MS analysis measured thallium in kale chips at 1.98 mg/kg and 2.15 mg/kg), and monitoring of symptoms and urine thallium levels after the source was removed. We use regulatory and research findings to describe the challenges and opportunities in characterizing the scale of thallium in our food supply and effects of dietary exposures on health. Discussion: Thallium can bioaccumulate in our food system, particularly in brassica vegetables like kale. Thallium concentration in foods can also be affected by manufacturing processes, such as dehydration. We have limited surveillance data nationally regarding this metal in our food supply. Dietary reviews internationally show increased thallium intake in toddlers. Limited information is available about low-dose or chronic exposures, particularly among children, although emerging evidence shows that there might be risks associated at lower levels than previously thought. Improved toxicological studies are needed to guide reference doses and food safety standards. Promising action towards enhanced monitoring of thallium is being pursued by food safety agencies internationally, and research is underway to deepen our understanding of thallium toxicity.

Occurrence of Ethyl Carbamate in Foods and Beverages: Review of the Formation Mechanisms, Advances in Analytical Methods, and Mitigation Strategies