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Mycotoxins' exposure by inhalation and/or dermal contact can occur in different branches of industry especially where heavily dusty settings are present and the handling of dusty commodities is performed. This study aims to explore the possible contribution of the occupational exposure to aflatoxins by analysing urine samples for the presence of aflatoxins B 1 and M 1 and aflatoxin B 1 -N 7 -guanine adduct. The study was conducted in 2017 on two groups of volunteers, the workers group, composed by personnel employed in an Italian feed plant (n = 32), and a control group (n = 29), composed by the administrative employees of the same feed plant; a total of 120 urine samples were collected and analysed. A screening method and a quantitative method with high-resolution mass spectrometry determination were developed and fully validated. Limits of detections were 0.8 and 1.5 pg/mL urine for aflatoxin B 1 and M 1 , respectively. No quantitative determination was possible for the adduct aflatoxin B 1 -N 7 -guanine. Aflatoxin B 1 and its adduct were not detected in the analysed samples, and aflatoxin M 1 , instead, was found in 14 samples (12%) within the range 1.9-10.5 pg/mL urine . Only one sample showed a value above the limit of quantification (10.5 pg/mL urine ). The absence of a statistical difference between the mean values for workers and the control group which were compared suggests that in this specific setting, no professional exposure occurs. Furthermore, considering the very low level of aflatoxin M 1 in the collected urine samples, the contribution from the diet to the overall exposure is to be considered negligible.

Demand for honey is increasing, especially if it is organic and if its nutritional properties are linked to untreated environments in order to guarantee quality for health. Sources of contamination of honey can be divided into environmental and apicultural. Therefore, the distribution of persistent organic pollutants, pesticides and antibiotic residues from geographical areas with different contamination sources (high anthropic impact, intensive farming, husbandry and low anthropic impact) was investigated in order to confirm the potential transfer of xenobiotics into the supply chain and to give beekeepers tools for the selection of areas dedicated to organic production. The presence of polychlorinated biphenyls, polybrominated diphenyl ether and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons was confirmed, not only in proximity to highly urbanised centres, where the concentrations were higher, but in all environment contexts, confirming their ubiquity. No antibiotics or neonicotinoids were detected in 95 organic honeys, demonstrating the absence of apicultural treatments and consequently the good quality of honey of different areas. These results are important due to the undefined regulatory European situation on honey antibiotic limits.

A new method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of 13 tropane alkaloids in tea and herbal teas using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to an Exactive-Orbitrap analyzer. A mixture of methanol, water, and formic acid was used for the extraction of the target compounds followed by a solid-phase extraction step. The validated method provided recoveries from 75 to 128% with intra- and interday precision lower than or equal to 24% (except for apoatropine). Limits of quantification ranged from 5 to 20 μg/kg. Eleven tea and herbal tea samples and two contaminated samples with Datura stramonium seeds were analyzed. Tropane alkaloids were detected in six samples with concentrations from 5 (apoatropine) to 4340 μg/kg (sum of physoperuvine, pseudotropine, and tropine), whereas concentrations from 5 (apoatropine) to 1725 μg/kg (sum of physoperuvine, pseudotropine, and tropine) were found in the contaminated samples., (© 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Tropane alkaloids are a wide group of substances that comprises more than 200 compounds occurring especially in the Solanaceae family. The main aim of this study is the development of a method for the analysis of the principal tropane alkaloids as atropine, scopolamine, anisodamine, tropane, tropine, littorine, homatropine, apoatropine, aposcopolamine, scopoline, tropinone, physoperuvine, pseudotropine and cuscohygrine in cereals and related matrices. For that, a simple solid-liquid extraction was optimized and a liquid chromatographic method coupled to a single stage Exactive-Orbitrap was developed. The method was validated obtaining recoveries in the range of 60-109% (except for some compounds in soy), precision values (expressed as relative standard deviation) lower than 20% and detection and quantification limits equal to or lower than 2 and 3μg/kg respectively. Finally, the method was applied to the analysis of different types of samples as buckwheat, linseed, soy and millet, obtaining positives for anisodamine, scopolamine, atropine, littorine and tropinone in a millet flour sample above the quantification limits, whereas atropine and scopolamine were detected in a buckwheat sample, below the quantification limit. Contaminated samples with Solanaceaes seeds (Datura Stramonium and Brugmansia Arborea) were also analysed, detecting concentrations up to 693μg/kg (scopolamine) for contaminated samples with Brugmansia seeds and 1847μg/kg (atropine) when samples were contaminated with Stramonium seeds., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)