Occupational Exposure to Mycotoxins—Different Sampling Strategies Telling a Common Story Regarding Occupational Studies Performed in Portugal (2012–2020)

Abstract

In occupational settings where exposure to organic dust occurs (e.g., intensive animal production, waste management, farming and many others) workers can also be exposed to mycotoxins. However, recognizing exposure to mycotoxins in workplace environments does not happen commonly and, consequently, remains as a not identified occupational risk factor. In the last decade, work developed in different occupational settings, using different sampling approaches reported that occupational exposure to mycotoxins occurs and it’s of upmost importance to be seen as an occupational concern that needs to be tackled. This paper intends to discuss the several possibilities available for assessing and characterizing the occupational exposure to mycotoxins through the description of the advantages and limitations of the different sampling strategies. Overviewing the approaches and the main achievements used in several field campaigns developed in Portugal, the knowledge obtained will be used to support the identification of the main aspects to consider when designing new occupational studies. The need for additional research work will also be discussed where new directions to follow will be debated.

The Toxicity of Wiped Dust and Airborne Microbes in Individual Classrooms Increase the Risk of Teachers’ Work-Related Symptoms: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Toxic indoor exposure is a complex phenomenon [16,27,[52][53][54][55]. Microbial toxins are known to be present in non-industrial buildings, but concentrations of individual toxins are typically low [21][22][23].…”

“…Recent studies show that toxins can also be very easily aerosolized [16,17], particularly even without airflow, due to highly toxic guttation droplets secreted by microbes actively growing on building materials [10,11,[18][19][20]. Settled dust collected from moisture-damaged buildings has been found to contain microbial toxins [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

Assessment of Mycotoxin Exposure in a Rural County of Chile by Urinary Biomarker Determination

“…Even though aflatoxins and OTA are the most sampled and prevalent mycotoxins in food in Chile [ 20 ], there is no current information regarding the direct estimation of exposure based on measurements of different mycotoxins in the population in the form of biomonitoring studies. It is hypothesized that rural populations may experience higher mycotoxin exposure than urban populations, due to occupational exposures [ 27 ]. Currently, exposures in Chile are not associated with specific foods or occupations.…”

Microbial Contamination in the Coffee Industry: An Occupational Menace besides a Food Safety Concern?

“…Of most relevance is the observation of section Flavi , the main producer of aflatoxins (e.g., aflatoxin B1), classified by IARC as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1) [ 53 ]. These findings claim attention for the need to consider mycotoxin presence in this workplace environment [ 54 , 55 ]. Indeed, the coffee workplace environment is the ideal setting for this phenomena due to several factors, including (a) the fact that the raw material handle is prone to fungal contamination [ 23 , 29 ], (b) fungal species known as mycotoxin producers are detected (e.g., Aspergillus species), (c) high dust contamination due to manual tasks are performed in this setting (e.g., as storage work, loading, handling or milling) promoting high exposure to organic dust [ 36 , 56 ] that act as carriers of mycotoxins to the lungs [ 57 , 58 ] promoting exposure via inhalation [ 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ], but also dermal absorption due to the deposition of dust particles containing mycotoxins in the skin.…”