FOOD CONTAMINANTS

• Group discussion involves trying to find as many food contaminant risks as possible and proposing preventive/corrective measures.
• Zhang et al., 2015 provides tables that can be used for supplementary reading.
• Food contaminant refers to the potential hazardous agents present in food that can cause foodborne illness.
• Foodborne illness is any illness caused by food.
• Foodborne diseases encompass a wide range of illnesses from diarrhoea to cancers.
• Foodborne illness may be caused by microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites), chemicals, or physical hazards.
• Many times, your “upset” stomach is really caused by foodborne illness.
• Children are at risk from foodborne illness due to their immature immune systems.
• Elderly, seniors are at risk from foodborne illness due to weakened immune systems.
• Pregnant women and individuals with compromised immune systems are at risk from foodborne illness.
• Common causes of foodborne illness include sick food workers, poor personal hygiene, improper holding temperatures, inadequate cooking and reheating, cross-contamination, and environmental contamination.
• Food can be contaminated physically, chemically, or microbiologically.
• Physical hazards in food can include foreign materials unintentionally introduced to food products or naturally occurring objects that are a threat to the consumer.
• Environmental pollutants such as lead, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and dioxins can contaminate food through water, soil, insects, and kitchen cleaning agents.
• Agricultural and veterinary practices can contribute to food contamination with traces of pesticides, animal antibiotics or animal growth hormones.
• Food-processing and packaging techniques can contribute to food contamination with the use of solvent residues, nitrosamines, and Bisphenol A-BPA.
• Naturally occurring toxins in food can include fungal and algal toxins.
• Food additives can contribute to food contamination with banned colour and preservatives.
• Chemical hazards in food can cause adverse health effects such as kidney and liver damage, fetal developmental disruption, endocrine system disruption, immunotoxicity, and cancer.
• The harmful effects of chemical hazards in food may result from the constant exposure of chemicals over time.
• Control Measures for food safety include cooking food thoroughly, storing food at safe temperatures below 5ºC or above 63ºC, keeping raw and cooked foods separate, avoiding re-heating food, preventing dry foods from becoming moist, disposing waste food and other rubbish carefully, keeping bins covered, keeping all animals and insects away from food places, and keeping everything as clean as possible.
• Lead contamination can be found in milk, canned/fresh meat, kidney, fish, molluscs, crustaceans, cereals, legumes, fruits, spices, drinking-water.
• Mercury contamination can be found in fish, fish products, mushrooms.
• Chemical contaminants include biological/microbial hazards such as infectious bacteria, toxin-producing organisms, moulds, parasites, and virus.
• Inorganic arsenic contamination can be found in wheat, drinking-water.
• Chlorpyrifos, diazinon, melathion, parathion, aldicarb, captan, dithiocarbamate contamination can be found in cereals, vegetables, fruits, drinking-water.
• Autolysis and microbacterial changes are sometimes desirable in food, for example enzymes cause fruit to ripen.
• Ochratoxin A contamination can be found in wheat, cereals, wine.
• Nitrate/nitrite contamination can be found in meat, drinking-water.
• Low-Risk Foods include dried or pickled foods, chemically-preserved foods, foods with high sugar content, foods with high salt content.
• Fumonisins contamination can be found in maize, wheat.
• Contaminants include foods such as PCBs, dioxins, dieldrin, aldrin, DDT, found in milk, butter, eggs, animal and vegetable fats and oils, fish, cereals, drinking-water.
• Potentially Hazardous Foods are foods that provide suitable conditions for rapid growth of microorganisms, including foods high in protein, plant proteins, starches, cooked veggies, leafy greens, cut tomatoes, raw sprouts, garlic in oil.
• DON contamination can be found in wheat, cereals.
• Aflatoxins contamination can be found in milk, milk products, cereals, nuts, spices, cocoa, coffee.
• Enzymes are chemicals that are found in food and can cause food to deteriorate in three main ways: ripening, browning, and oxidation.
• Cadmium contamination can be found in kidney, molluscs, crustaceans, cereals, vegetables.