| Summary: |
Humans are exposed to multiple contaminants through the diet, whose combination may pose aggravated food safety issues that potentially affect the health of all citizens (23). These contaminants are inevitable in the food chain, can be found even in a balanced diet, and include a multitude of compounds as dioxins, furans, PCBs, pesticide residues, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, mycotoxins, heterocyclic aromatic amines, disinfection by-products. (23). Moreover, the number of emerging food contaminants, such as natural toxins, will grow due to climatic changes or the introduction of novel
foods/ingredients (24-25). Understanding the human exposure to multiple contaminants is thus crucial to characterize their potential health impact and the burden of disease in human populations. However, there is no harmonized approach for the assessment of combined exposure to food contaminants, and current regulatory risk assessment focuses only on individual contaminants (25). Therefore, the exposure assessment of humans to multiple food contaminants imposes several challenges, which will be tackled by the SALIVA+ project. |