Environmental organic contaminants in food

Where analytical methods are available it is largely because of a crossfertilisation of effort from well-established areas of food contaminants work. For example, the steady development since the 1960s of methods of analysis for chlorinated pesticides led to the analysis of food for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) since PCBs were readily detectable by general methods used to analyse food for organochlorine pesticides. The analysis of food for chlorinated dioxins and furans (PCDDs and PCDFs) at the very low levels at which they are found in food is a more recent development, and one that is an important precedent since it arose from interest in environmental contamination rather than because of cross-fertilisation of scientific methodology from an established area of food chemistry. Although dioxins were detectable some years ago at much less sensitivity in some pesticides, it was environmental interest that led to their study at very low levels in the food chain. 

In addition to the well-characterised groups of contaminants such as PCBs and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), there are hundreds of thousands of other organic chemicals that are emitted by industrial processes and which have the potential to enter the food chain by a variety of routes. It would be 

The following criteria are probably the key ones in the selection process  

Benzene is considered to be a genotoxic carcinogen and has been shown to induce leukaemia in some humans exposed to relatively high occupational levels.10 There are less toxicological data for toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, cumene and naphthalene. 

Estimates of daily exposure to benzene from urban or suburban air range from 180 to 1300 /ig/person/day.1112 Urban air concentrations of the other aromatic hydrocarbons are similar to those of benzene and the vast majority of exposure of the general population to these other aromatic hydrocarbons will be due to road transport or solvent-containing products rather than food. A 1995 survey of these compounds in samples from the UK Total Diet Study showed that average dietary exposures to benzene and related compounds from food in the UK are low, and very much lower than estimated exposure from active smoking of tobacco or intakes from air by urban dwellers.13 The mean dietary exposure to benzene was estimated to be in the range 0.9-2.4 /ig/person/day. 

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WHO. 1987. Principles for the Safety Assessment of Food Additives and Contaminants in Food. WHO Environmental Health Criteria 70. World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. who. 1996. Food Additive Series 35, WHO Technical Report of the 44th meeting, Annex 5. 

Principles for the Safety Assessment of Food Additives and Contaminants in Food, Environmental Health Criteria 70, Geneva, World Health Organization, 1987. 

Chemical contamination does not respect international borders. The contaminants are spread worldwide by air and water. Environmental organic contaminants and inorganic contaminants such as metals and metal compounds, nitrate and nitrite will be present in all foods, though sometimes in quantities below the limit of detection of the analytical methods of today. Moreover, foods as well as raw materials and ingredients for food production are to an increasing extent traded across borders. 

Biopract provides technological products and processes for industry, agriculture, and environment. They not only produce technical enzyme preparations but also develop enzymes for applications in agriculture, food, and textile industry as well as in environmental technologies. On the later, bioremediation has been an area of service delivery from Biopract. Their activities regards microbial preparations for the bioremediation of organic contaminants (mineral oil (MKW), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene (BTEX), methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE), volatile organic hydrocarbons (VOC), and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO)). 

Sediments can also serve as potential exposure routes for aquatic food chains through the bioaccumulation of contaminants by benthic organisms. The potential of sediment contaminants to expose organisms in sediments and the water column is determined by their bioavailability. The bioavailability or bioaccessibility of nonpolar organic contaminants is determined by how strongly they are bound to organic matter in soil and sediment [31, 32]. This fact should be taken into account in a realistic assessment of the environmental risks of these contaminants (Fig. 13). 

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