Fumonisins in Catalonia (Spain) and exposure assessment of special population groups.

Germán Cano-Sancho (1) , A.J. Ramos , S. Marin , V. Sanchis

1 LABERCA - Laboratoire d'étude des Résidus et Contaminants dans les Aliments

Fumonisin B1 (FB1) and B2 (FB2) are mycotoxins produced by F. verticillioides and F. proliferatum that commonly contaminate corn. The objectives of this study were, in one hand, to study the occurrence of fumonisins in Catalonia (north-eastern region of Spain), and, in the other hand, to assess the exposure of Catalonian population to these mycotoxins. Contamination data was provided by a wide survey, where 928 individual samples were pooled to analyze 370 composite samples. Fumonisins were extracted and purified using immunoaffinity columns, and determined by means of HPLC with fluorescence detector. The raw consumption data came from a nutritional study specifically designed to assess the dietary intake of the main foodstuffs related to fumonisins contamination for all population age groups. In addition, two special groups were selected to be specially related with maize consumption: immigrants and celiac sufferers. Contamination and consumption data were combined by simulation using an essentially parametric (P-P) method. The P-P method draws sampling values from distribution functions fitted to consumption and contamination datasets. Moreover, to quantify the accuracy and reliability of the statistics estimates, we built the related confidence intervals using a Pseudo-Parametric bootstrap method. Considering the results from this study, fumonisins can be commonly found in some commodities from Catalonian market, such as beer, corn snacks or ethnic foods, however, in any case these values exceed the maximum EU levels. The most exposed group should be expected to be infants followed by immigrants, but in all cases, they were far from the TDI of 2 g/ kg bw/day.

Mots clés: Life Sciences

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Germán Cano-Sancho, A.J. Ramos, S. Marin, V. Sanchis. Fumonisins in Catalonia (Spain) and exposure assessment of special population groups.. Food Additives and Contaminants, 2012, 29 (5), pp.1. ⟨10.1080/19440049.2011.644813⟩. ⟨hal-00780447⟩