Perchlorate contamination of tea leaves and a corresponding probabilistic dietary risk assessment using Monte Carlo simulation

ABSTRACT

Perchlorate is known as a thyroid disrupter. Its contamination in various tea samples was monitored, and 286 samples belonging to four types of tea leaves were analysed. The detection rate of perchlorate in tea was 99.3%. The mean concentration in different tea types decreased in order from green tea, oolong tea, white tea to black tea. A probabilistic approach was performed to evaluate the dietary exposure of perchlorate for six different subpopulations. The daily intakes (EDIs) for consumers over the age of 41 were higher than that of other subpopulations. The hazard quotient for six groups was lower than 1 even at the extreme percentile (P99). It indicates that the risk of dietary exposure to perchlorate from tea consumption for Fujian people is acceptable without considering other foodstuffs. However, the high occurrence of perchlorate in tea samples suggested that the actual source of this contaminant should be further investigated.

KEYWORDS:

• Tea
• perchlorate
• exposure assessment
• risk characterisation
• Monte Carlo simulation

Acknowledgments

The authors deeply appreciate Dr. Jianyu Li and Associate Prof. Mengzhu Shi (Fujian Academy of Agricultural Science) for their assistance with Figure 1 plotting.

Authors’ contributions

QY and QL contributed in the design of the study. QY, SY, WL and MH conducted the experiments and performed the statistical analysis. QY wrote the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Program for Quality and Safety on Agro-products of China [GJFP2019014]; and the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province [2020J011351]; and the Project for Youth Innovation Team in Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences [CXTD 2021011-3].