Occurrence and dietary exposure assessment of multiple mycotoxins in corn-based food products from Shandong, China

ABSTRACT

This study was designed to investigate the occurrence and exposure assessment of multiple mycotoxins in corn-based food products from Shandong Province, China. Results demonstrated that the mean level of total mycotoxins in test samples was 197.2 µg/kg. The most frequently found mycotoxins were deoxynivalenol (96.7%) and fumonisin B₁ (94.4%), with mean contamination levels of 65.24 and 128.2, respectively. Among these corn-based food products, thin corn pancake had the highest mean contamination (886.7 µg/kg), followed by wotou (143.7 µg/kg), corn cake (135.4 µg/kg) and mantou (63.73 µg/kg). The average exposure values to total fumonisins and deoxynivalenol were 0.05 and 0.02 µg/kg bw/day, which were lower than the provisional maximum tolerable daily intake values of 2 and 1 µg/kg bw/day, respectively, as established by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives. In the future strict control and systematic monitoring are needed to secure food safety and human health.

KEYWORDS:

• Mycotoxins
• co-occurrence
• daily intake
• exposure assessment
• corn-based food products
• food safety

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21705095 and 31772061), the Health and Family Planning Commission of Shandong Province [Nos. 2014WS0382 and 2015WS0283] and the Science and the Technology Development Program of traditional Chinese medicine of Shandong Province [No. 2015-316].