Assessment of potential hazards of the inadvertently present chemicals in food

Abstract

During the 71st session of the Executive Committee of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, New Zealand proposed draft Guidelines for risk analysis of chemicals inadvertently present in food at low levels, noting that regulatory documents do not currently cover this group of substances. Methodological approaches to detecting and identifying chemical substances inadvertently present in foodstuffs were proposed In the Russian Federation. The developed methodological approaches include four stages: analytical identification of chemical substances; integrated assessment of chemical hazards employing additional selection criteria followed by the application of a score and summation of points; categorizing chemical substances with the assignment of potential hazard categories and final stage - health risk assessment for selected chemicals based on the integrated index. The presented methodological approaches were tested on the example of canned meat for infant nutrition consumed in the Russian Federation and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Nnitrosamines were assessed as a priority potentially hazardous inadvertently present chemical substance in samples of canned meat for infant nutrition for health risk assessment using methodological approaches developed in the Russian Federation. Assessment of the health risk to infants when consuming canned meat for infant nutrition containing Nnitrosamines on the example of products sold in the Russian Federation and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam revealed no excess hazard quotients (HQ < 1.0) in both territories. However, the calculation of carcinogenic risks has shown that when canned meat for infants sold in the Russian Federation from 6 months to 3 years of age is consumed, a carcinogenic risk may be formed in infants of the corresponding group. This difference between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Russian Federation is due not only to the difference in the content of N-nitrosamines in the examined product but also to the greater volume of canned meat consumption in Russia.