Review of harmful chemical pollutants of environmental origin in honey and bee products

Abstract

Honey is a natural food with many pro-health properties, which comprises a wide variety of valuable ingredients. It can also be the source of chemical contaminants of environmental origin, including POPs that can contribute to adverse health effects to human. Monitoring the degree of pollution of honey/bee products with hazardous chemicals is important from a nutraceutical point of view. In the present work, overview of recent literature data on chemical pollutants in honey/bee products originating from the environment was performed. Their MLs, MRLs and EDI were discussed. It can be concluded that huge amount of research concerned on the presence of TMs and pesticides in honey. Most of the studies have shown that honey/bee products sampled from urban and industrialized areas were more contaminated than these sampled from ecological and rural locations. More pollutants were usually detected in propolis and bee pollen than in honey. Based on their research and regulations, authors stated, that most of the toxic pollutants of environmental origin in honey/bee products are at levels that do not pose a threat to the health of the potential consumer. The greatest concern relates to pesticides and TMs, because in some research MLs in individual samples were highly exceeded.

Keywords:

• Honey
• pesticides
• polychlorinated biphenyls
• polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
• radionuclides
• toxic metals

Additional information

Funding

Publication supported by the project from the Provincial Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management in Lodz (no. 729/BN/D/2019) entitled: “Selection of microorganisms for the construction of ecological protective preparation for honey-bee (Apis mellifera)”.