Monitoring contamination of perchlorate migrating along the food chain to dairy products poses risks to human health

Abstract

Assessments of human exposure to sodium perchlorate via dairy sources are limited. The current study applied untargeted metabolomics (LOD, 1.08–35.60 μg L-1; LOQ, 2.54–90.58 μg L-1; RSD < 6.2%) and proteomics methods by UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS to investigate the metabolic pathways and nutritional quality of goat milk contaminated with sodium perchlorate. Specifically, 11 metabolites including lactose (from 2.01 to 0.58 mg L-1), adenosine 5′-monophosphate (from 1.23 to 0.45 mg L-1), hypoxanthine (from 0.63 to 0.08 mg L-1), etc. and 3 crucial enzymes include α-lactalbumin, xanthine dehydrogenase and creatine kinase related to the quality traits of goat milk after sodium perchlorate treatment. Overall, except for spermidine, other related metabolites significantly decreased with the increase of sodium perchlorate concentration 0–160 μg L-1 and storage time (4–12 h). Collectively, we provide previously uncharacterized goat milk nutritional quality degradation mechanism induced by sodium perchlorate and a reference to ensure its safe use in human health.