Occurrence of Aflatoxins and Ochratoxin A in Baby Foods in Portugal

Abstract

Infants have a more restricted diet and they generally consume more food on a body weight basis than adults. Therefore, the significance and potential health risk of any contaminant in foods consumed by infants is increased and diligent attention must be paid to this particular area. The present study aims to determine the occurrence of aflatoxin M 1 (AFM 1 ), aflatoxin B 1 (AFB 1 ) and ochratoxin A (OTA) in processed cereal-based foods (flours) and infant formulae (milk powder) available in the Portuguese market, both sold as conventional and organic origin. Mycotoxin determination was carried out using a method previously applied to duplicate diet samples. This method employed chloroform extraction, liquid-liquid extraction, immunoaffinity column (IAC) cleanup and HPLC analysis with fluorescence detection after postcolumn derivatisation. Quantification limits were 0.014, 0.004 and 0.028 μg kg −1 for AFM 1 , AFB 1 and OTA, respectively. These toxins could only be quantified in 12 of 27 analysed samples (15 positive results): two samples with AFM 1 , two samples with AFM 1 and OTA, one sample with AFB 1 and OTA and seven samples with OTA. Positive results concerned four for AFM 1 (26%), one for AFB 1 (7%) and ten for OTA (67%). For these samples, contents ranged between 0.017-0.041 μg AFM 1 kg −1 , 0.034-0.212 μg OTA kg −1 , and one sample had a value of 0.009 μg AFB 1 kg −1 . Considering the presented results, we could provisionally conclude that the presence of these mycotoxins in baby foods does not constitute a public health problem. These are the first results concerning the occurrence of mycotoxins in marketed baby foods in Portugal and this is the first study using the HPLC method, proposed for duplicate diets, in baby food sample analysis.

Aflatoxin M1 and ochratoxin A in baby formulae in Turkey: Occurrence and safety evaluation

“…The occurrence and level of AFM 1 in formula samples are in line with those revealed by other authors. Alvito et al (2010) demonstrated that AFM 1 was detected in 4 out of 27 baby foods purchased from big supermarkets, retail shops and pharmacies in Lisbon, Portugal, with a maximum level of 0.041 mg kg À1 . In a screening study carried out on infant formula milks in Italy, Meucci et al (2010) found that only two out of 185 samples contained detectable levels of AFM 1 (range ¼ 11.8e15.3 ng l À1 ).…”

“…Infants are a vulnerable part of the population due to, in part, their physiology, a fairly restricted diet and a higher consumption relative to their body (Alvito, Sizoo, Almeida, & van Egmond, 2010). There are many foods on the market today that are specifically manufactured for infants and young children aged between 1 and 3 years.…”

High-Throughput Analytical Strategy Based on Modified QuEChERS Extraction and Dispersive Solid-Phase Extraction Clean-up Followed by Liquid Chromatography-Triple-Quadrupole Tandem Mass Spectrometry for Quantification of Multiclass Mycotoxins in Cereals

“…Such studies include quantification of low molecular weight polyphenols in vegetables (Silva et al 2012), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in fish (Ramalhosa et al 2009), acrylamide in food (Mastovska and Lehotay 2006), veterinary drugs (Brondi et al 2013;de Souza et al 2013), mycotoxins in grains (Kokkonen and Jestoi 2009) dried fruits (Azaiez et al 2014) and cereal products (Cunha and Fernandes 2010;Vaclavik et al 2010;Zachariasova et al 2010;Soleiman et al 2011;Ferreira et al 2012) as well as in other matrices (Alvito et al 2010;Bertuzzi et al 2012;Fernandes et al 2013).…”

Challenges in risk assessment of multiple mycotoxins in food

“…Therefore, a representative food sampling design (selecting the most susceptible foods, considering a large set of individual and/or composite samples), an accurate chemical analysis method (with low detection limits) and a suitable method to manage left-censored data will be decisive to obtain realistic exposure estimations with low level of uncertainty. This could be particularly important for the exposure assessment of vulnerable population groups such as small children that are generally exposed to higher levels of mycotoxins than adults (Alvito et al, 2010;Assunção et al, 2015;Cano-Sancho et al, 2013;Sirot et al, 2013).…”