Wide-scope pesticide residues and contaminants in cereal-based infant formulas

DZUMAN, ZBYNEK; MAGNI, FLORENCIA; HAJSLOVA, JANA; REPETTI, MARÍA ROSA; DEMONTE, LUISINA; BELDOMÉNICO, HORACIO; MICHLIG, MELINA; MICHLIG, NICOLÁS

Workshop; 7th Latin American Pesticide Residue Workshop; 2019

The presence of pesticide residues and other toxins in food can negatively affect human health. Special attention must be paid on the safety of children and infants, as they represent a vulnerable risk group within the population. The wide variety of cereal-based infant food matrices and their complexity, as well as the high number of compounds that should be monitored, requires the application of reliable, high-throughput and efficient analytical methods. In Argentina, despite the great economic and nutritional importance of cereals destined to infant foods and final products from the baby food chain, there have been no rigorous controlsand not even sound specific research studies to achieve a deep characterization of the problem. Although several studies related to the determination of different classes of pesticides in baby food have been published, in this work we focused on the application of a multiresidue-multiclass method where pesticides, mycotoxins and pyrrolizidine alkaloids were simultaneously analysed by high performance liquid chromatography separation and high resolution tandem mass spectrometric determination (HRMS/MS) [1].The presented study was focused on the determination of multi-class contaminants in different kind of commercial cereal-based baby and infant food. Several commercial samples containing mainly oat, rice, wheat and maize and one organic rice (non- commercial) were analyzed. Previously optimized and validated QuEChERS-based extraction procedure was employed for the analyis. Crude extracts from 2 g of sample were analyzed employing HPLC coupled with Q-orbitrap mass analyzer. A MS/MS spectral library including 323 pesticides, 55 mycotoxins and 11 pyrrolizidine alkaloids was used to non-target screening.The HRMS/MS approach allows non-target screening, retrospective data mining as well as quantitation and confirmation of theoretically unlimited number of analytes within a single analytical run. The availability of multiple confirmatory steps (accurate mass, isotopic profile and MS/MS fragmentation spectra) significantly improves the confidence in the results.The results on focused pesticides, showed that the samples contained from 1 to 6 pesticides simultaneously with concentration levels in the LOQ-80 µg kg-1 range. The most frequently detected pesticides were chlorpyrifos and pirimiphos-methyl which are both widely used insecticides in Argentina. Frequent mycotoxins occurrence was also found most of them with quantified values. Zearalenone was significantly found (50% of samples) in all analyzed cereal types: wheat, maize, rice and oats. Emerging toxins such as argot alkaloids and ennantins were quantified in oats samples and in mixed oats-rice samples. Finally, 4 maize-based samples were also contaminated with fumonisins while no pesticides and mycotoxins were detected in the organic rice.This kind of wide-scope study was not previously reported in processed infant food cereals from Argentina. Findings were relevant since multi-contamination in individual samples was frequent and in some cases with considerable levels, indicating that more research in this area is needed and that improvements on monitoring systems and management practices at farm level are highly recommended to protect baby and infant health.[1] Dzuman Z., Zachiarasova M., Veprikova Z., Godula M., Hajslova J. Analytical Chimica Acta 863-1 (2015) 29-40.